This is the site of the Coggeshall toll-gate where tolls were collected from users of the road. There would have been a main and a side gate and a Toll Board showing the scale of charges. Tolls were sent to the Essex Turnpike Trust who administered the system and allocated funds to repair and maintain the roads for which they were responsible. Waggons with wide wheels were charged at a lower rate because they would compact the road surface rather than cut it up as narrow wheels did. Coggeshall had 11 miles of turnpike, on both sides of the town along the main road between Colchester and Braintree. The Toll-keeper may have been stationed in the white weather-boarded hut shown here to the side of the house and this would have been where the record book was kept. In quiet times application would have been made to the house itself and any of the family might then collect the toll and open the gate

Coggeshall as usual, seems to have had its own way of doing things. At a meeting of the Essex Turnpike Trust in February 1850 the accounts for the Coggeshall district were not presented as they had been found in 'the most extraordinary condition'. An expert was sent down to look at the books but even he could make no sense of them. The trustees were told that they had 'heard of extraordinary things from Coggeshall before' and this provoked much merriment. The gate keepers of the Coggeshall District were ordered in future to pay their accounts weekly to the treasurer.

The Tollgate itself had been removed in 1863 and the posts and other structures shortly afterwards at a cost £71. At this time the Turnpike was still in operation and the removal of the Coggeshall gate increased the receipts at the next gate at Stanway by £2 a week. The 'tenement used as a toll-house' was up for sale in 1865 and valued at between £70 and £80.

Click here for more on the Toll House

[ES 22/02/1850, Eastern Counties Advertiser 01/02/1865, ES 06/09/1867]
Date; probably about 1900.
Ref 25/08