Easy one!

[algy]

Easy one especially if you live in the area.

 

What's the pub and where is it and what was the purpose of the single story building to the left of it.

 

[Grappenhall Guy]

Dog and Drat toll house

[algy]

Dog and Drat toll house

Told you it would be easy if you lived in the area, just as a matter of interest Grapp's do you remember the old Dog, not the Toll house, I had many a pint in there when I first came to Grappenhall, I think the landlord at that time was "Pudge" Beswick, one of the Lower Walton Beswick clan.

[Dizzy]

Why did they have a Toll House there ?

[algy]

To take money of commercial travellers, ie. horse & carts, Stagecoaches etc. the idea was to use the money to maintain the highways but as today not all of the toll money was spent wisely and found it's way into the packets of unscrupulous officials!.

 

Excerpt from a book from 1886 called "The Royal Mail" (out of copyright).

 

How the people managed to get from place to

place before the Post-office had a history, or indeed

for long after the birth of that institution, it is hard

to conceive. Then, the roads were little better than

tracks worn out of the surface of the virgin land,

—

proceeding in some cases in a manner approaching to a

right line, over hiUs, down vaUeys, through forests and

the like ; in others following the natural features of

the country, but giving evidence that they had never

been systematically made, being rather the outcome

of a mere habit of travel, just as sheep-tracks are

OLD EOADS. 3

produced on a mountain-side. Such roads in winter

weather, or in rainy seasons, became terrible to the

traveller : yet the only repairs that were vouchsafed

consisted in filling up some of the larger holes with

rude stones; and when this method of keeping up

repairs no longer avaUed, another track was formed

by bringing under foot a fresh strip of the adjoining

land (generally unenclosed), and thus creating a

wholly new road in place of the old one. Smiles

in his ' Lives of the Engineers ' thus describes certain

of the English roads : " In some of the older settled

districts of England, the old roads are still to be

traced in the hollow ways or lanes, which are met

with, in some places, eight and ten feet deep. Horsetracks

in summer and rivulets in winter, the earth

became gradually worn into these deep furrows,

[Dizzy]

Thanks Algy.

 

I have to say the bit which says "Such roads in winter weather, or in rainy seasons.... became terrible to the traveller : yet the only repairs that were vouchsafed? consisted in filling up some of the larger holes with

rude stones " sounds somewhat familiar eh ?

[Bazj]

Thanks Algy.

 

I have to say the bit which says "Such roads in winter weather, or in rainy seasons.... became terrible to the traveller : yet the only repairs that were vouchsafed? consisted in filling up some of the larger holes with

rude stones " sounds somewhat familiar eh ?

 

I wish the council would carry out even that level of road maintenance Dizzy..... "chance would be a fine thing....." as they say!