Chapter 34

The early road system and the turnpikes

When the Cockermouth area drifted back into isolation after the Romans left, the roads from Papcastle deteriorated to such an extent that today their very existence, though surmised, cannot always be proved on the ground and of those definitely located long stretches tie beneath fields. For centuries there were only local inter-village tracks, then routes to Norman castles or between monasteries and their sheep-rearing areas. The 14th-century Bodleian map shows no roads within the Lake District, the Shap route being the nearest, and Speed in 1610 has no roads at all. John Ogilby in 1675 has four Cumbrian roads, on two of which Cockermouth lies, so it had again become a road junction.

From the many 18th-century maps, some of them highly inaccurate in their placing of villages and lakes, we may broadly conclude that there was a road eastwards round the foot of Bassenthwaite Lake, one NE to Carlisle (on some maps via Plumbland), another W and one SW to Egremont. Only at the end of the century does the Lorton-Whinlatter road appear, to supersede the Ouse Bridge route as the way to Keswick.

Essential supplies which could not be produced locally and such commodities as wool and ore were moved by packhorse, a traffic which had become highly organised by the mid-18th century. The horses followed regular routes, strengthened with stone where necessary, and provided with bridges having low parapets which would not foul the loads. Of some 230 horses passing in and out of Kendal each week, one ‘gang’ of 15 came to Cockermouth and possibly other gangs would come this way. [1] The Pack Horse Inn was next to the Globe Hotel, but a number of inns were used as halts or termini for packhorse trains.

This adjustable and reliable, though slow, form of transport was still remembered when William Dickinson wrote in 1853

• “…only yeomen and the larger occupiers could boast carts; the produce of the farms, hay, corn and peat, being brought in on railed sledges and the more portable articles on pack horses. Coal and lime were conveyed by the last method across the miry moors and commons … and many persons now living remember the very common use of the pack horse both as the general carrier from town to town and the vehicle in transit for grain to the mill or market, and for manure, etc., on the farm.” [2]

The ‘clog carts’ which were superseding pack horses by the end of the 18th century were poor affairs, with solid wheels fixed to rotating axles -single horse for local use, two horse for longer journeys. [3]

In 1783 Thomas Jackson extended his Kendal-Cockermouth carrying business to Workington and Whitehaven, a two or three day delivery service ran twice a week. [4] A few years later there were services to Workington and Maryport twice a week and to Whitehaven three times, all returning the same day, and two Carlisle-Whitehaven services spent one of the two nights en route in Cockermouth, Joseph Blaire using the Ship and Wilfred Robinson ‘inning’ at the Packhorse. Samuel Norman ran a carrying service to Keswick three days a week, leaving his own house, the George and Dragon, at 3 a.m. and calling at the Globe, and the Globe was also the halt for a Kendal-Whitehaven service twice a week.

Carrying charges were determined by the Justices of the Peace and from Cockermouth were:

Cockermouth to Newcastle – 84 miles – 6 ¾ d per stone – 9s-2 ½ d per pack

Cockermouth to Carlisle – 28 miles – 2 ¼  d per stone – 3s-0 ¾ d per pack

Cockermouth to Whitehaven – 13 miles – 1 d per stone – 1s-5 d per pack

Cockermouth to Penrith – 30 miles – 2 ½ d per stone – 3s-3 ¾ d per pack

Cockermouth to Kendal – 44 miles – 3 ½ d per stone – 4s-9 ½ d per pack

A pack was more than seven pounds. The penalty for overcharging was £5 “to be levied by Distress and Sale of his or their Goods”. [5]

In the carrier services of the early 19th century, for horses, wagons or both, the King’s Arms, the Black Bull and the Tip Inn (probably the Tup, later the Crown) were starting points. As the wagon routes became more metalled, cattle were increasingly moved along drove roads. Slowly moving herds, covering some 12 to 15 miles a day, came from the great Scottish fairs to be fattened on the Cumbrian plains or on their way further south, or after fattening converged on the Cumbrian markets for resale. When these roads were fenced they had wide grass verges, and may often be recognised by these, as on the Lorton road.

Before the advent of rail and then cattle wagon transport, resting pastures were spaced and here blacksmiths would work throughout the night to shoe the cattle if they had to travel along metalled roads. [6] The great fairs were a part of the droving system and were great agricultural and social events, held three times a year. Rosley, near Wigton, was very important in this area, being the destination of the drove roads which passed through or near Cockermouth from the south-west. The site was of 40 acres (the Hope and Anchor Inn now stands on it), purposely chosen to be central and away from populated areas to give the necessary space, for in addition to the needs of the cattle there had to be room for people to camp and for the necessary stalls of food, etc. [7]

Marshall writes

• “The great fairs .. attracted circuses, potters or gypsies in their hundreds, yet more hundreds of self-styled judges of horseflesh or sheep or cattle, young girls showing off the latest styles or searching for husbands, housewives selling eggs or gingerbread, members of the quality rubbing shoulders with ruffians, labourers in search of jobs, drovers from Inverness, and scores of farmers disposing of surplus grain or wintered stock or fat cattle. They were, before the age of railways, social occasions of a very special character.” [8]

Rosley would attract Cockermouth people for business and pleasure.

To return to ordinary roads, the parish was responsible for those within its boundary and parishioners had to work on them for six days a year without pay. Any inhabitant who owned a cart and at least three horses had to send a horse team. [10] Work was directed by the parish surveyor, one of the local landowners appointed for a year – also unpaid. This system continued until an act of 1835 gave parish vestries power to levy rates for road maintenance and payment of qualified surveyors, then in 1862 parishes were grouped into highway districts for greater efficiency. One of the greatest causes of complaint was the use made of main roads by through traffic which made no contribution to maintenance, a complaint heard continuously until the institution of ‘trunk roads’.

Cockermouth tried to get some help in 1748 when it based a petition on the experiences in the 1745 rising. Cannons were moved from Whitehaven to the end of the turnpike at Bridgefoot, but had then to be dismantled and carried by packhorse for three days to reach Carlisle.

Cockermouth asked that the military road being made between Newcastle and Carlisle, in consequence of the difficulties of moving troops in the same rising, should be “brought on from Carlisle … over Darwent Bridge in this Town and so to Bridgefoot … but the crisis had passed and no help came. [11]

Immediate responsibility for the most important roads passed from the parishes with the formation of turnpikes, first organised by justices of the peace but soon to become the concern of turnpike trustees. Road users contributed to road upkeep and improvements by tolls paid when passing through gates placed at intervals. Parishes still had the ultimate responsibility (and still maintained minor roads), but the trusts were to be short-term means of improvement. Each new turnpike necessitated a parliamentary bill. Two acts for London areas in the late 17th. century were the first of 50 before 1750 and another 1600 by 1790. [12] Whitehaven Turnpike Trust was set up in 1739 (by 1746 their roads were “equal to the best turnpikes around London” [13] and there were another 15 trusts in Cumbria by the end of the century. [14] The Quarter Sessions at Cockermouth in 1777 had little business except for road bills, “it being now the general opinion of the people, that the first opening to the improvement of a country, so far back in husbandry as this, is good roads”. [15]

An appeal of 1755 for investment in the proposed Cockermouth-Kendal turnpike stresses in considerable detail the many advantages -movement of travellers, cattle and a long list of merchandise, the linking of the ports via Cockermouth with the rest of England, greater intercourse between the two towns, etc., and hopes that in particular the Egremonts, Lowthers, Penningtons, etc., will support the venture. Proposals included

• “the Tolls collected at Each Gate be a penny every day, for a Single Horse and so in proportion for other Cattle, Carts, and other Carriages, with half Tolls for Coals …. one Gate be placed near Curgate in going out of Cockermouth towards Whinlatter the Commissioners intrusted with the Execution of the said Act be, for Cumberland, the Bailiffs of Cockermouth, … together with such persons duely qualified as shall agree to Lend Fifty pounds or upwards at the Interest of 4 pct. on the Credit of the Tolls … That Provision be made in the same Act, for repairing all Branches contiguous to the same road ….” [16]

A turnpike committee contained 50 to 1 00 trustees who must own land worth at least £1 00 a year, so they were landowners or professional men. The newly-formed Cockermouth-Carlisle Trust in 1824 included six Lowthers and a Musgrave, Graham, Curwen and Senhouse. The financial support and the co-operation of such people in allowing land for improvements was vital, but the actual administration was largely in the hands of solicitors in the towns along the road. Often families were associated with a trust over a long period – the clerk of the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust from 1803 to 1857 was a member of the Fisher family. [17]

As trusts were envisaged as temporary, a renewal act was needed every 21 years, an expensive business and responsible for some 25% of the debts incurred.

Although administered locally, trusts were subject to national controls, such as the number of gates permitted on a length of road, the number of payments that could be demanded of one vehicle in a day and the rates chargeable for different categories. Early trusts were much concerned with the weight of loads and the width of wheels and made regulations governing both. Sometimes weighing machines were installed. A minimum width for wheels was stipulated, with higher charges for narrow ones because of the greater damage they caused to the road surface.

A trust was often responsible for roads other than the one between the two towns named in its title. Thus the Cockermouth-Maryport Trust controlled 42 miles, six times the distance between the two places and including the Maryport-Allonby-Wigton road. The Cockermouth-Penrith Trust had over 60 miles, twice the distance between the towns. The average mileage of the 24 Cumbrian trusts was 24.66, [18] so obviously in contrast to distances such as 42 and 60 miles some bodies controlled quite short lengths. Trusts were reluctant to amalgamate and there was often overlap of interests, but families such as the Senhouses and Lowthers with a financial interest in a number of turnpikes were a unifying influence. Sometimes trusts had a clerk in common, which helped towards unity, an example being the clerkships of Edward Steel and Edward Waugh to the Cockermouth-Carlisle, Cockermouth Workington and Cockermouth-Maryport Trusts over a period of 30 years. [19]

The five trusts serving Cockermouth were the Cockermouth-Workington (formed in 1753), Cockermouth-Keswick-Kendal (1761, but divided in 1824 when the Ambleside Trust became responsible for the southern section), Cockermouth-Carlisle (1824), Cockermouth-Maryport (1825) and Cockermouth- Heskett- Penrith (1761).

Considering in detail the Cockermouth-Maryport road, we may note that the Act required not only Cockermouth solicitors (Steel and Son) but London parliamentary agents (Benson and Rose). The trust, which included the names Lowther, Vane, Dykes, Fletcher, Senhouse and Spedding, had to meet within 14 days of the passing of the act, which it did in the Globe. Tolls were fixed at

Horse, etc., drawing coach. etc – 4d

Horse, etc., drawing wagon, etc.

If wheels not less than 4 ½ inches – ½ d

If wheels narrower than 4 ½ inches – 2d

Horse, etc., not drawing – 1d

Horse, etc., drawing empty or laden lime for manuring – 1d

Drove of oxen, cows or neat cattle – 10d per score (in proportion for less)

Drove of pigs, hogs, calves, sheep, lambs – 5d per score (in proportion for less)

At any gate, the toll needed to be paid only once a day and on the Cockermouth-Maryport section horses, carriages, etc., need pay at only one gate. with the exception of vehicles hired for profit. The rights of the Senhouse (Ellenborough) and Dykes (Dovenby) families to have wagon ways crossing the road are safeguarded, but the flange rails must be between road level and % of an inch (19 mm). below it. [20]

The period of the trusts coincided broadly with the time of enclosure and the Enclosure Commission had an interest in the re-alignment of roads and in the planning of new roads over enclosed commons. There was no difficulty about using common land, but when private land was taken due notice had to be given and compensation paid, while the garden and land immediately round a house could not be interfered with. [21]

The actual widening, straightening, planning of gradients and surfacing of old roads and the creation of entirely new stretches was a skilled task. The two best-known specialists, Thomas Telford and John Louden McAdam, were both active in Cumbria. Telford was the more costly but did a good job, avoiding steep gradients and using a broken covering, made convex for drainage, on a finn foundation of large stone. McAdam being cheaper was much in demand, but for the lower price he used less foundation. He is first heard of locally when the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust asked him to recommend a surveyor in 1823, but he was probably involved earlier than this. During the 1820s and 1830s he advised at least eight Cumbrian trusts and had so much work in Cumbria that he took a house in Keswick. Both men appointed sub-surveyors as they were also busy in other parts of the country, but in 1824 McAdam was personally responsible for ten miles of new road between Keswick and Penrith and four miles between Keswick and Cockermouth. [22]

The work of both men was criticised. It was said that the large stones on McAdam’s roads lamed the horses, but a Liverpool writer said his roads were good for draught horses and carriages, though

• “For human beings in dry weather they are almost beyond endurance; for they are one continual cloud of dust, blinding to the eyes, filling the nostrils, going down the mouth and throat by quantities to suffocation and completely ruinous to all decent clothing. Houses by the road are inundated with dust, and all cleanliness destroyed and useless. The fields are so covered on each side, according as the wind blows, that they are of much less value an acre than those more distant from it.” [23]

An example of development of an existing road was the improvement at Cockermouth Town Head, along St. Helen’s Street. The surveyor of the Cockermouth-Heskitt road was told in 1786 to demolish the wall at this point and to widen and ditch the road, cost not to exceed £30. The work was done for £25 and the surveyors were granted a turnpike ticket

“for the sum of twenty-five pounds at 4½% interest to be issuing out of the tolls arising from the Turnpike road leading from Heskitt by Ewes Bridge to Cockermouth”

Not all proposed turnpike plans reached fruition and frequently a number of alternative routes were considered, such as the Cockermouth-Wigton plan of 1808. The advantages of the route were the avoidance of the steep Gote Brow and the high land of Moota, so often wet and misty; shortening of the distance by two miles; and the use of common land for part of the way. [24] The road was not built and the present road was turnpiked in 1824. (Fig.66)

Before the making of the Belle Vue junction, at the time of enclosure, the Carlisle road forked right immediately beyond the entrance to Hames Hall (a length of track still remains here) to join the present road at the lay-by by the entrance to Wood Hall.

Another change near the town was the re alignment of the Embleton road, the former route now being a public footpath (Fig. 67).

There was an even earlier road to Embleton. In 1810 a dispute arose regarding a right of way which resulted in a case coming before the assizes at Carlisle, William Scott v Benson and others. The defendant’s plan of the area concerned, where his carts used a track which the plaintiff claimed they were not entitled to use, indicates ‘a very ancient road to Embleton’. This continued due east from Long Croft Lane (now Windmill Lane), following a course a little way up the south side of Slate Fell above the old railway track. It is still possible to locate sections below the Fell. How ‘ancient’ the road was we cannot say – certainly it must have existed long before the days of turnpikes.

We have seen that the early route to Keswick was via Ouse Bridge and along the eastern side of Bassenthwaite Lake and that later the Whinlatter route became the main road. Proposals for the completion of the road along the western side of the Lake were put forward in 1825. [25] There were three sections to be made, the nearest being from Close to Dubwath, avoiding the climb over the end of the hill towards Higham.

It became increasingly clear that a trust needed an efficient full-time surveyor if the roads were to be well built and if the standards laid down by the Commissioners for new roads in enclosure areas, and inspected by them during construction, were to be attained. A salary such as the £15 for the surveyor of the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust in 1807 would not attract a full-time competent man as would the same trust’s £110 fifty years later. The officials connected with the Cockermouth roads included a number of well known names, as the list shows. (Appendix 18). For the trustees themselves, there was little to do once improvements had been made; just occasional appointments and the routine task of letting the tolls. This is reflected in the fact that in 20 years from 1804 to 1824 meetings of the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust were adjourned 50 times for lack of a quorum. [26]

A trust had two sources of income. investment and tolls. Landowners were in general interested the Earl of Lonsdale had over £4,000 in the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust although he had little if any property along it and only used it to travel between Lowther and Whitehaven. On the other hand, many local churches, charities, etc., invested small amounts. The Trustees of Lorton School and the Trustees of Keswick Dissenting House each had £100 in the same trust, and the Trustees of the Cockermouth Dispensary invested £50. In the Cockermouth-Workington Trust the church-wardens of both Cockermouth and Brigham had £50. As private investors died their holdings passed to their heirs, often “to persons totally unconnected with the County”. [27]

The second aspect of financial income was the collecting of tolls. Because of the difficulty of ensuring that a tollgate keeper handed over all his takings the gates tended more and more to be let by auction, at a sum which did not indicate how much would be taken at any particular gate in a year but which would be sufficiently below the takings to give the collector a reasonable profit.

Every year in November and December notice was given in the press of the auctioning of tolls for the following year and, as some guide to prospective purchasers, the last letting figure was given. Thus in 1777 the Cumberland Pacquet [28] contained notice of the auctioning at the House of John Meals, Innholder, Cockermouth, of the Kirkgate Turnpike Tolls, the income from which had averaged £80 a year over the last three years. Kirkgate Toll was let for £81 and Town Head Gate for £55 in 1783. [29] The auctions were held in varying inns but eventually settled in the Court House.

The following were the amounts paid for the four years 1875 to 1878 for two Cockermouth gates [30]

Cockermouth and Carlisle Road Gote Gate: 1875 £250 – 1876 £288 – 1877 £316 – 1878 £328

Cockermouth and Workington Road Fitz Gate: 1875 £102 – 1876 £83 – 1877 £82 – 1878 £81

The amounts paid for toll gates indicate facts, such as the probability here that the traffic along the Gote road was about four times that on the Workington road in 1878, but they also pose questions which only a knowledge of very local history can answer. Was the drop in the use of the Fitz Gate connected with quarrying?

Local gates of the Cockermouth-Penrith Trust were Kirkgate, Whinlatter, Cockermouth Town Head and, probably replacing this, St. Helens. A minute of 1768 refers to the turnpike road “from Hesket by Ewes Bridge to Cockermouth and from thence by Lorton over Whinlatter to Keswick”. [31]

In the period when roads were improving and railway competition had not developed, traffic naturally increased. The 1820s and 1830s saw a great increase in the number of coaches and better roads brought other social benefits, -quicker news from the rest of the country, a greater spread of new ideas and of education, markets more accessible, and of course an increase in trade. In the reverse direction countrymen were tempted to the cities by the tales told. Toll receipts went up and up. Then came the railways. Already by 1838, at the very beginning of the railway era, all the Cumbrian trusts except two were in debt to a total of over £135,000. [32] Cockermouth-Penrith owed £13,740. Then receipts fell as the railway network spread. The lease of Bridgefoot Gate averaged £70 in 1875-8; one hundred years earlier in 1782 it was let for £162. [33]

It was the opinion of trustees that the railways would last only a short time and that their competition was a temporary setback. Expecting better times, in 1823 the Cockermouth-Workington Trust was paying off its debt at only 1 % per year and the Cockermouth-Penrith and Cockermouth Maryport Trusts as a matter of policy always gave priority to repairs over repayment of debts. Then in 1849 it was made compulsory for all trusts to pay 5% into a sinking fund, with the result that when the Cumbrian trusts came to an end only three were still in debt. [34]

Short distances and frequent users always presented problems. Complaints were made about the re-siting of gates to intercept more traffic to the new railways, which used the roads as feeder routes, but if the gates were put in the right positions the tolls benefitted by such developments.

On the other hand, roads could be crowded with carts of coal and lime, heavy loads which damaged the surface and yet paid nothing because of the positions of the gates. Trustees complained too about tolls being evaded by the use of side roads and were anxious to bring such roads under their jurisdiction. When it was eventually realised that the railways had come to stay and that long road journeys were largely finished, the trusts sought to compensate for losses by developing their role as feeders to the railways. However the fall in receipts was not reversed and steps were taken to dissolve the trusts.

Those for the roads from Cockermouth to Workington, Keswick and Carlisle were wound up in 1883 and that to Maryport in 1885. The Whitehaven Trust had already gone in 1870 [35]

So ended an era of 150 years of road development around Cockermouth. The return of the roads to the local councils placed a heavy burden on them until 1878. The ‘Highways and Locomotives Amendment Act’ then ruled that all roads dis-turnpiked since 1870 should be designated ‘main roads’ for which the county should bear half the cost of maintenance, the local council sharing the other half with central government. Unfortunately Cumberland was slow to implement the act and the Quarter Sessions decided that the county would only take over responsibility for roads which were in good condition in the opinion of the county surveyor and which carried a large volume of non-local traffic. In 1879 only Alston and Whitehaven met the qualifications, but there was a rush to improve the ex turnpikes and by 1890 the county had taken over most of them. [36] They then extended their responsibility and of the 508Y2 miles of main road which the county managed in 1900 some 206 miles had never been turnpiked. [37] The county already had responsibility for a large number of bridges and was now able to integrate bridge and road maintenance.

Local councils still had their problems. In 1899 Cockermouth Rural District Council asked for county help in maintaining the Honister road, a very expensive stretch carrying heavy seasonal traffic, but the request was refused. [38]