On this day … 26 July 1902

The Preston Guardian reported that tolls no longer needed to be paid at the Lea Gate Toll Bar on the Preston-Blackpool main road, and two days later ‘the private Toll Bar at Lea Gate had been removed and abolished in the presence of a considerable concourse of people, and the entire route was now free, open, and public from end to end’.

Until then, travellers to the Fylde had to pay tolls to the owners of a section of the road, the Hoghtons at Lea and the Cliftons of Lytham at Clifton.

The following account is based on a detailed and fascinating 1945 paper in the journal of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire by the county archivist, Reginald Sharpe France, that traces the history of the road from Preston to Blackpool from Roman times to the Second World War. It is available on line free: https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/97-3-France.pdf

Sharpe France writes:

‘In his manuscript reminiscences, William Hutton of Birmingham records that on 13 October 1788 he lost his way between Preston and Blackpool. To us, who know so well that road which runs, if not like the broad highway which leadeth to destruction, at least with some of its attributes, the idea of getting lost between Preston and Blackpool is somewhat ludicrous.’

Yet at that time, ‘the highway to Blackpool was unpaved, thus being in winter – and often in a rainy summer – almost impassable’, and beyond Kirkham led into a network of country lanes, in which it was easy for the travellers to lose their way.

And despite its deplorable condition, the travellers still had to pay for the right to use it:

‘… by going for about two miles over a road which was the private property of two families, and for which a toll was levied; a state of affairs which lasted, mirabile dictu, until 1902. In other words the road from the Plough Inn at Ashton to the Savock [Savick Brook] belonged to the Hoghtons, and thence westward through Clifton village to Scales was the property of the Clifton family.’

Before the Hoghtons and Cliftons had built their private road, in the seventeenth century one road into the Fylde followed a circuitous route down Lea Road and round the back of Lea and Clifton. This was the old King’s Highway, according to Sharpe France.

Another way at that time was along the Lea and Clifton marshes, and then through Clifton to Newton. But travellers using that route had to pay tolls to the Hoghtons and Cliftons:

‘In the Hoghton rental of 1648 is an item, “Passage money over the Marsh, £4”; in 1660 “Passage money at the Stakes £3 10s.”; while the growth of traffic is indicated by “a toll for Passage over Lea Marsh sett for £24” in the accounts for 1720.’

Similar charges were levied at Clifton. For many years the collection of these tolls were farmed out to members of the Campbell family, who lived at Ashton and Lytham. The Cambell’s Inn that used to stand on the bank of the Ribble was probably the home of one branch of the family.

Sharpe France describes this route:

‘Until 1781 the road ran over Lea Marsh, that is, more or less along the river bank, south of the old and new Lea Halls and joining the line of the present road opposite the Lea Gate Hotel … “frequently overflowed by the Tides … and sometimes impassable”.’

This route was surveyed in the 1680s, but this was unknown to Sharpe France when he was writing his paper. The surveyors’ measurements and sketch plans were discovered a few years later, and their survey, now reconstructed, shows the route taken.

It was in 1781 that the Hoghtons and Cliftons decided to build their new road through Lea and Clifton, which served as the main road to the Fylde right through the nineteenth century, earning the two families considerable sums in tolls collected, with little spent on repairs, according to frequent complaints from correspondents to local papers.

An example of the charges is the one levied in 1888 for a hearse drawn by two horses. This was charged at six pence at both the Lea Gate and Newton toll gates, with ‘Corpse 1/- extra at each place’.

Things improved when the county council took over responsibility for the whole of the main road from Preston to Blackpool at the beginning of the twentieth century, as Sharpe France notes, with an interesting observation on the arrival of modern times in the Fylde in 1910:

‘… the road was brought up to a satisfactory condition immediately before Blackpool Aviation Week. The motor car traffic during that week, however, did so much damage that the additional expenditure of £198 was absolutely necessary to restore it to a passable condition.’