Adlington and Westhoughton Turnpike Road

In this day and age we pay road tax which (in theory) pays for the upkeep of our roads. In the past there was no such thing. This led to the building of private roads, with turnpike gates along it, to charge travellers for their journey. There were a few exceptions to who paid tolls. For example, foot passengers travelled through them for free, as did anyone going to to Church on a Sunday, or any wagons carrying road materials or agricultural loads.

A turnpike trust was normally started by a group of trustees who invested an amount of money. They would set up an act, which would usually run for 21 years, before it needed to be renewed. This money would be repaid with interest from the money made from charging tolls on these roads.

The first sign of a toll road in Adlington is in 1752, which saw the creation of the Adlington and Westhoughton Turnpike Trust Road, which ran from the Nightingales at Heath Charnock (where the two halves of Rawlinson Lane meet today), along the bottom road to Westhoughton. This is from where the name Westhoughton Road evolved.

The old toll house, at this junction is possibly a remnant of this toll road. (However, there also appears to have been another toll road, which ran from the modern-day junction of the two Rawlinson Lanes, up to the top, and along the top road through to Horwich, and then onto Bolton. This will be explored in a future blog post)

Former toll house the the junction between upper and lower Rawlinson
Lane. Copyright Lancashire Country Council

This turnpike road formed part of a very important road, as this was the main road between London and Carlisle, and would have seen quite a lot of traffic. Many inns sprung up along these roads, and is probably the reason for the existence of many of the inns on Market Street. The Clayton Arms, White Bear, and the appropriately named Wagon and Horses all had stables at one point, and travellers would have stabled their horses, and laid down their heads for the night at the inn.

There was also a toll bar very close to the Clayton Arms and White Bear, which can be seen on the following three maps from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There was a toll collector staying there during the 1851 census, and the building is still there from a Lancashire Union Railways map from 1864. Market Street during the first half of the nineteenth century was known as Bare Lane, and it is my theory that this is a corruption of the word 'bar' because of the toll bar here.

Yates 1786 map - see TB for toll bar circled in red near the junction
of Park Road and the bottom main road

Greenwood's 1818 map - Again near this same junction, circled 
in red, we can see the word bar (apologies for the quality)

A very pixelated map c1845 showing what appears to be the 
toll bar on the junction of Market Street and Park Road 
(circled in red)

These roads became quite profitable and the leases for the collection of tolls began to be auctioned to the highest bidder. For example, this was auctioned in August 1838, and it was advertised:

"Notice is Hereby Given, That the tolls arising at the toll gates upon the turnpike road leading from Westhoughton to near Halliwell Field, in the township of Heath Charnock, in the County of Lancaster, called or known by the names of the Westhoughton and Green Barn Gates, the Adlington and Grimeford Gates, and the Rawlinson Bridge Gate, will be let by auction to the best bidder. Last year they produced: Westhoughton and Green Barn Gates £561 above the expense of collecting them, Adlington and Grimeford Gates and Rawlinson Bridge gate, the sum of £407 above the expense of collecting them."

In 1841, Adlington's railway station opened and revenues appear to have dropped significantly. In 1871 the government stopped renewing the Turnpike Trust licences, effectively ending this type of road funding. This meant that control of these roads now reverted to the local authority. This particular turnpike continued until 1873, after when it became a public road. By 1894, the toll bar building near the Clayton Arms and the White Bear had gone.