The Sandwich to Dover Turnpike, 1833-1874
THE SANDWICH TO DOVER TURNPIKE
1833-1874
Dr FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
Though it was quite short - only some eleven miles - the Sandwich to
Dover Turnpike road is of considerable interest. Though some records
survive for quite a number of the turnpike roads in Kent, most of
those records are very incomplete and it is not possible to understand
what was going on owing to lack of evidence. The records of the
Sandwich to Dover turnpike, however, are much more complete:
there are two account books which cover the years 1797-1832 and
1863-187 41 and two minute books which cover the years 1832-46 and
1846-7 42, when the Trust was finally wound up. The account books
are less helpful than might have been hoped, as they refer to receipts
and payments in the briefest way, often only by initials, and usually
without detail of what transaction was involved, but the minute books
cover in detail the last 42 years of the Trust's existence. Rather more
to the point is the fact that the line of the road was to be paralleled by
a railway: in I 84 7, a branch line was opened by the South Eastern
Railway from Minster (on the Canterbury-Ramsgate line) to Deal,
then the site of an Admiralty dockyard, and an important victualling
station for ships either sheltering in the Downs or making their last
English landfall before a long voyage. This line was extended to
Dover in 1881 as a joint project between the South Eastern Railway
and the rival London, Chatham and Dover line, so that it is possible
to see from the Turnpike Trust's minutes the effect of the coming of
the railway on half the length of road - unfortunately, the Trust was
wound up before the second part of the railway was completed, but
the fact that it was so wound up is an eloquent piece of evidence in
itself. The Trust's records, therefore, give an excellent, almost
unique (in Kent at least) opportunity to see just how the coming of the
railway affected the contemporary road system.
1 Centre for Kentish Studies. Maidstone [CKSJ Tl J/F I and Tl I/F2, respectively.
2 CKS TI 1/Al and TI I/A2, respectively.
FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
When the surviving Minutes begin the Trust was evidently reasonably
prosperous. The four gates (Dover Castle hill, Deal Castle, Upper
Deal and Stone Cross at Sandwich; effectively a gate at each end of
the road, and a gate on either side of the township of Deal) were being
Jet at an average annual rental of some £830 a year (£867 in 1833, the
first year for which the record survives in this form), and this continued
until 1838. The Trust felt sure enough of its position to repay
£300 worth of bonds in April 1833, and the road was deemed to be 'in
tolerable condition throughout' in that October. The Trust certainly
was not ready to throw its money about; in October 1834, an offer to
provide two gas lamps for each toll gate at an expense of £ I O a year
per gate was declined on the ground that the expense was not justified,
though in July 183 7 the gatekeepers were ' ... to have each a sufficient
light at their toll houses to enable passengers to distinguish their
money' which conjures a delightful picture of elegant gentlemen
fumbling in their purses to find the necessary pence for the toll.
The Minutes contain a ceaseless list of minor repairs required or
carried out: in January I 834, the Corporation of Sandwich was
required to repair the embankment of the South stream between St.
Bartholomew's [Hospital] and the town; at the April meeting it was
noted that the repair had been completed. In 1835, the Surveyor was
instructed to use a sieve with a mesh of 2 inches rather than the 2½
inches hitherto employed, presumably to ensure a better surface. At
the same time the crest of Hacklinge Hill was to be lowered by three
feet 'more or less', and similar injunctions and requirements continue
to appear over the years. Occasionally, the Minutes record that
somebody has been presented before the local magistrates and
charged with stealing some road stone, or sand, and bas been duly
fined. The overall image presented is one of a small group of
Trustees (few tended to attend the quarterly meetings) doing their
conscientious best to maintain their not very long road as well as
they might.
However, all was clearly not well with the Trust's finances. In
January 1838, new bars (which seem from the context to have been
subsidiary gates) were to be erected at Sholden church, and at
Walmer pond - the exact placing of the latter was to be the subject of
much debate on and off over the next decade, with proposals to move
it up the hill to a position opposite the National school being
regularly defeated - presumably with the idea of increasing revenue.
If that was the intention, it does not seem to have worked very well,
as in April 1838 proposals to improve the road were rejected as
'impractical in the present state of the funds', and the idea of putting
the maintenance of the road out to contract was mentioned, though it
seems to have got no further than that. At the same time the
2
THE SANDWICH TO DOVER TURNPIKE
Master-General of the Ordnance was asked to wait for the £25 a year
due from the Trust in connection with Dover Hill (perhaps as rent for
the land the toll-house stood on; it is not clear in the Minutes why any
payment was required) ' ... during the inability of the Trust to pay it.'
At the same time the payment of interest due to bond holders was
suspended ' ... except to absolutely necessitous holders'. How the
level of necessity was to be judged seems to have been left to the
Treasurer to work out, not always to everybody's satisfaction; in May
Mr Watson was denied his interest as 'not really necessitous'.
The situation cannot have been helped by the fraudulent behaviour
of some of the toll collectors: the Walmer toll bar collector was found
to be issuing free tickets in July 1838. This of course will have been
a loss to the lessee, rather than to the Trust, but if the practice were to
become widespread, lessees would not come forward, hence the
Trustees' concern.
At what must have been a very tense quarterly meeting in October
1838 the Treasurer reported that the average income for the five years
ending at Christmas 1838 had been £860, but that the annual average
expenses had been £911; the Trust had been losing money at the rate
of £51 a year. The Surveyor reported that another £400 was needed to
put the road into repair, and it was resolved to issue further bonds for
£500 on the security of the tolls. Future expenses (presumably
including interest on the new bonds) was expected to run at £1,115 a
year. A sub-committee had previously been appointed to consider the
financial situation, and it now reported that:
It is evident that the present income of the Trust is totally inadequate to
afford the necessary funds for maintaining the road in repair and providing
for the payment of the bondholders, and it appears to your Committee
absolutely necessary to increase the revenue £300 a year by some alteration
of the tolls now payable on the road.
It was resolved that each gate should in future collect its own toll -
presumably, it had been possible to buy tickets which passed more
than one gate, and this had clearly been the cause of some loss of
revenue, which the Trust now hoped to defeat. For a long-term
solution, it was resolved that a petition should be made to Parliament
to alter the Acts of 3 7 George III ( 1797?) and 58 George III ( 1818?),
which presumably laid down the various toll rates. Hardly surprisingly,
with the financial situation in such a state of flux, nobody
would be very keen to take a year's lease of the tolls, and so they were
let out for the first six months of 1839 only for a total of £359,
considerably less than they had been worth (on a pro-rata basis) in the
previous years.
3
FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
In January 1839, the Surveyor reported that the expenses of keeping
the road in repair for that year would come to some £1,192 I ls. 9d. -
even worse than the figure suggested only three months before.
During the spring of 1839 the petition to Parliament proposed in
October 1838 had been formalised into a Bill, and its progress
through Parliament was under discussion. For the quarter JuneSeptember
1839 the Trust decided to take the collection of tolls into
its own hands, and four toll keepers were appointed. The keepers at
Upper Deal (which also covered the Shelden bar) and Deal Castle
(which also covered Walmer bar) were to be paid 18s. a week each;
the keepers at Dover Castle gate and Stone Cross gate were to receive
14s. each. That the Stone Cross keeper should be paid at a lower rate
was not surprising; that gate's rental was always the lowest of the
four, but it is a little surprising that the keeper at Dover Castle hill
was considered to be worth no more than his colleague at Stone
Cross: the Dover Castle gate was usually either the most, or second
most, expensive gate in terms of rental of the four. Perhaps the fact
there were subordinate bars to be looked after at Upper Deal and Deal
Castle swung the scale in their favour. At all events, the Dover Castle
hill keeper was not long enough in his post to have much opportunity
for complaint, as the tolls were let out in September, for the period
6th September to the end of the year, roughly four months. The four
gates were let for a total of £523, representing a very much increased
annual value of some £1,560, presumably reflecting the new tolls
permissible under the new Act, though this is nowhere specifically
stated.
At all events, the Trust was by no means out of the financial wood as
yet, and in October 1839 it was reported that total indebtedness stood
at £1,181 l 2s. 4d. whereof £557 6s. 6d. represented unpaid interest: as
a temporary solution a further bond of £300 was to be sought.
Payments Receipts
Road £ 40.00.00 Balance in hand £ 18.18.003/4
Interest £ 71.10.00 Of Mr Hooper £200.00.00
Of Mr Waller £ 80.00.00
£298. 18.003/4
Liabilities
Bills unpaid £703.18.06
Arrears of interest £551.18.09 Deficiency £539.09.02¼
£838.07.033 £838.07.03
3 Sic: Quite how the total figures in this column were arrived at is a mystery.
4
THE SANDWICH TO DOVER TURNPIKE
At the end of 1839 the Treasurer's accounts for the past year made
such gloomy reading that, exceptionally, they were copied into the
Minutes.
To add to the gloom, the Treasurer reported that expenses for 1840
(including repayment) would come to £1,443 10s. - and that, to make
matters worse, 'The road [was] reported to be in a very bad state of
repair'. However, even to this black cloud there was a silver lining:
the tolls had been let for a total of £1,506, nearly twice the previous
average annual rate. Perhaps it was as well for the Trustees' peace of
mind that they did not know that this figure was never to be reached
again.
December 1840 saw another proposed move of a gate, this time of
the Stone Cross gate to the end of Felderland Lane - that is, about a
mile nearer to Deal, but the proposal was defeated and a similar
proposal was again defeated a year later (December, 1841). In
January 1841 it was reported that the ' ... road ... [is] progressively
improving, but still in a bad state of repair', and expenses for 1841
were estimated at £1,504 12s. Finances were obviously getting better
though, and in May 1841 it was agreed that bond holders should be
paid one year's interest - presumably that due in 1838. By January
1842 the estimate for the coming year's expenses had been brought
down to £1,400 3s. 9d., and another year's interest was paid to bond
holders that May. In November came the first of the various unsuccessful
attempts to move the Walmer bar to a new position outside
the National School. In November 1842, the tolls for 1843 were
advertised at a total of £1,380, but even at this reduced figure there
were no bidders, and the Trustees again decided to collect the tolls for
themselves. This time the Upper Deal collector was only to be offered
15s. a week, and the Deal Castle man 12s., though a separate collector
was to be employed at Walmer for 7s. The Dover Castle and Stone
Cross collectors were to be paid 12s. each. The total wages bill would
thus be £2 18s. a week; in 1839, it had been £3 4s. Did this indicate
that the 1839 keepers had been overpaid, or that there was now less
work for them to do? Or perhaps that cheap labour was easier to come by?
By January 1843, the coming year's estimated expenses had fallen
to £1,305 1 ls., but a suggestion to push up income by establishing
another bar in Walmer 'at Mr Ansell's' was defeated after the receipt
of a memorial from those living near Mr Ansell. Another year's bond
holders' interest was to be paid in January, 1843, and another in
January 1844, when the expenses estimate had been given as £1,364
12s.: the road was reported to be 'much improved in repair'. In April
of that year it was resolved that half a year's interest be paid; the other
half was authorised in September. The bond holders were thus now
receiving their due interest, but unless some payments of overdue
5
FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
interest were made which were not minuted (which is quite possible)
they still appear to have lost three years' interest.
All the same, by 1844 the Trustees could look back on the last six
years with some pride. What had been a disastrous financial situation
had been dealt with, and the Trust was now clearly solvent. No bid
had been received for the Stone Cross gate in 1842, and the Trustees
presumably collected the tolls for themselves, as they did for all
gates in 1843, but rents for 1840, 1841 and 1844 had averaged £1,471,
and estimated average expenses for those years had been given as
£1,337 I ls. The road was now in better repair than it had been,
interest was being paid on time, even if arrears may not have been
paid in full.
But there was a cloud 'no bigger than a man's hand' on the horizon.
In October 1844, the Trust's clerk was directed to watch the progress
of the several railways bills which were being brought before Parliament
and which might affect the Trust's interests. In October 1845,
the Trustees noted that the South Eastern Railway's proposed branch
from Minster to Deal and Walmer would cross the Trust's road on the
level in various places, and the clerk was instructed to record the
Trust's resolve to 'dissent from the proposed undertaking'. By
January 1845, the Trust was considering reports on various railway
bills, those for the Central Kent and the Kentish Coast. A memorial
was to go to the House of Lords (presumably to the Select Committee)
urging 'the necessity of due regard being had to the vested interests
of the bond holders'. The Trustees do not seem to have been very
worried; they must have been much more interested in the estimate
for the coming year - £1,247 ls., down yet again, with the road
reported to be 'considerably improved in repair': the financial
situation was so promising that the Trustees resolved to pay off £200
of their principal monies.
In April 1845, the railway was becoming less of a fantasy and more
of a problem: the South Eastern Railway was to be asked to indemnify
the bond holders for any loss occasioned, and the Company was asked
to carry its railway only over or under the Trust's road, rather than
across it (i.e. by a level crossing). The meeting was enlivened by the
draw for the repayment money. It had been agreed that the £200 be
split into four lots of £50, and the serial numbers of all the bonds were
written on separate pieces of paper, put into a handkerchief (so stated
in the minute) and four lucky names were drawn. The handkerchief
cannot have been a great success; when the draw was made on future
occasions, it is recorded that a hat was used.
By May 1845, no reply had been received to the Trust's letter about
the railway, and the Clerk was instructed to warn the promoters that,
unless the Trust was indemnified, it would oppose the branch by
6
THE SANDWICH TO DOVER TURNPIKE
Counsel. Later that month the Clerk reported that the Company had
stated that the railway would not go further than Deal, and not on to
Walmer or Dover. This was more because of the geography of the
Deal - Dover route, which no less a person than George Stephenson
had said was impossible in the present state of railway development
without the expenditure of far more money than the railway company
had at its disposal4
• but the Trustees must have been pleased, nonetheless.
The Company was willing to agree a site for their terminus in
Deal - perhaps the Mayor and Corporation of Deal had already
suggested a site to the Company - but they warned that they would
have to insist on a level crossing at Sandwich; the Trustees seem to
have accepted this, and merely reiterated their determination to
oppose level crossings in Deal or Walmer - which the railway had
already implied would now not be required, anyway. The branch,
which in the end terminated in Deal was opened to traffic on 1st July,
184 7, but the event was not mentioned in the Trust's minutes, nor was
the fact that the branch's first locomotive bad to come by way of the
Trust's road from Dover to Deal, a journey only made with great
difficulty5
• The Trust appears to have treated the interloper with
dignified disdain.
Bond holders continued to be paid, £200 a time in four lots of £50
as the time passed - June and November 1846, April and May 1847,
April and November 1848, July 1849 - but by 1852 money was getting
rather tighter; only two lots of £50 were paid in that year, though
another bond holder accepted £99 for a £ I 00 bond, perhaps deciding
that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush.
The railway mania continued; in January 1846, the Trustees
considered plans from the Dover and Deal Railway, the Dover and
Deal Railway and the Cinque Ports, Thanet and Coast Railway, the
North Kent Railway and the Great Kent Atmospheric Railway, and in
January 1850 the North Kent Railway Continuation Company, and
decided to dissent from all of them. Perhaps more long-sighted than
the Trustees, would-be lessees of the toll rentals were fewer; nobody
had taken the Upper Deal gate in 1845, or the Upper Deal and Stone
Cross gates in 1846 and 1847, and there were no bids for any gate in
1848 and 1849, and when the gates were eventually all let in 1850, it
was for only £1,004. For the years 1850 to 1859 ( except for I 855,
when only one gate, that at Dover Castle was let), annual rents
4 House of Lords record office: Select Committee on Railway bills (South Eastern):
branch to Deal and extension of the South Eastern Canterbury, Ramsgate and Margate
Railway Bill. Committee office evidence, 1845. Vol. 77. Evidence of George Stephenson.
5 Gray, A., South Eastern Railway (Midhurst, 1990), 252.
7
FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
averaged £957 13s. 4d., not far from what they had been just over ten
years previously.
Expenses for 1849 were forecast as £899 l2s., but the Trustees
were warned that the ' ... road was in a declining state between Deal
and Dover, but in good repair between Deal and Sandwich.' Perhaps
because of this in January 1850 the year's expenses were forecast as
increased to £I,085.12s. The trend of annual expenses was generally
downward, however, which may reflect the fact that bonds were
steadily being paid off, so that the interest due on them no longer
had to be allowed for, but when the Trust received notification in
November 1850 that it should make provision for a sinking fund for
the repayment of bond holders under the terms of 12 & 13 Viet., c. 87,
the Trustees voted to defer consideration of the matter: however, in
January 1851, they formally agreed to comply with the provisions of
the Act. The year's forecast expenses were brought down to £833 17s.
4d., but the road was described as being in a declining state between
Deal and Sandwich (paralleled by the railway) and rather improved
between Deal and Dover (where it still had the monopoly). Despite
this, expenses for 1852 were further reduced to £800 17s. 4d.
Perhaps to reduce the nuisance which payment of tolls certainly
occasioned regular travellers along the road, 'composition' appeared
for the first time in January 1855; four gentlemen offered various sums
to buy what would appear to have been the equivalent of season tickets
for the use of various sections of the Trust's road, which offers were
accepted. Such offers and acceptances appear quite often in later years.
As pointed out above, the rents for the tolls, though much Jess in the
1850s than they had been in the early 1840s, were still in general
above the level of those pertaining to the 1830s, before the Trust
obtained its new Act of Parliament, and as late as 1872, the last year
when all the gates were let, the rental received was £1,127, considerably
above the level of the 1850s. All the same, the Trust was, by
the mid 1860s, only just paying its way. The balance carried forward
from one year to the next varied between £2 2s. 6d. (1867) and £327
4s. 9½d. (1872), but averaged £139 Ss. Nothing was being put aside
for future contingencies. The end came in 187 4, when the Trustees
offered the toll-houses and their surrounding lands to the owners of
neighbouring property at the Surveyor's valuation, with a note that
they were not to be sold for less than this, though when the local
landowner was offered the Stone Cross toll house for£ l 07, his return
offer of £87 was hastily accepted.
Over the years, the minutes of each meeting had ended with a paragraph
to the effect that the meeting was adjourned until such and such
a time, on such and such a day, to meet at such and such a place. The
last minute (for 27th October, 1875) signals the end of an era:
8
THE SANDWICH TO DOVER TURNPIKE
'The meeting was adjourned until such time and date as the Trustees
may determine'.
The Trust was gone.
EFFECT OF THE RAILWAY ON THE ROAD
The effect of the rail way on the Trust's fortunes seems to be very clear.
In the 1830s the Trust was in a position of considerable financial
difficulty; the new Act secured in 1839 made the imposition of
increased tolls possible and from that, the rents for which the various
gates could be let increased dramatically, almost by a factor of two.
The South Eastern Railway opened its branch from Minster to Deal
in July 1847. Between Sandwich and Deal the Trust's road passed
only through the parishes of Sholden and Upper Deal on its way to
Deal; there can have been very little traffic along the road which was
not travelling from one end to the other of that section of the road.
The rents for which the Trust was able to let the two gates at either
end of this stretch of the road collapsed. The Upper Deal gate could
only be let for some £250 a year in the early 1850s, less than the rental
in the early 1830s; by the end of the decade the figure had dropped to
about £220. The story was the same at the Sandwich end of the road,
at the Stone Cross gate. The rentals there dropped to the levels pertaining
in the 1830s: both gates were bringing in a sum which had
been castigated as wholly inadequate in October 1838. The fact that
this fall in revenue was a result of the railway is firmly outlined by the
fortunes of the other two gates, at Deal Castle and Dover Castle, at
either end of that stretch of the Trust's road which was not to be
paralleled by a railway until 1881.
The Dover Castle gate rental, having been about £200 a year in the
l 830s jumped to about £350 in the early l 840s - when the new tolls
were in force, but there was no railway rivalry at all - and only fell
back to a figure between £300 and £350 for all the I 850s. The Deal
Castle gate did not weather the storm quite as well; after an average
rental of just under £3 50 in the 1840s, it dropped back to about £225
in the 1850s, but this was well above the 1830s figure of about £175.
It is also clear though that, though the volume of traffic passing
along the Sandwich-Deal part of the road declined considerably
immediately after the railway came - perhaps to about half its
pre-railway level, if the rentals are any guide6 - it did not continue to
6 On the assumption that the volume of traffic in the 1830s and I 840s was more or less
constant, the fall of rental value after the railway came to something like half its former
value after 1847 suggests a corresponding decline in the actual volume of road traffic.
9
FRANK W.G. ANDREWS
ANNUAL RENTAL FOR WHICH THE VARIOUS GATES ON THE
DOVER TO SANDWICH TURNPIKE WERE LET FROM
1833T01873
1833 1834 1835 1838 1837 1838 1839 1839
JOIN