Miscellany

 

Normanton Toll Gate

 

The Coleorton to Rempstone Tunpike Trust set up in 1756 and renewed in 1799 and 1821 installed a Toll Gate and House at Normanton situated on the Remstone Road, near the Normanton Turn (Zouch Bridge side)  and is shown on an 1836 map as a dot with the initials T.G.(Toll Gate) but is not shown on the 1879 OS map (revised 1895 and published 1896).

 

The scale of charges as revised in 1821 were:

For every horse, mule, ass, ox or other beast of draft drawing any carriage – 4 pence

For every horse or other beast, laden or unladen, and not drawing – 1 penny

For every drove of oxen, cows or neat cattle – 10 pence per score and so in proportion for any less number

For every drove of calves, hogs, sheep or lambs – 5 pence per score

For every horse drawing any carriage laden with millstones – 8 pence

According to the census returns, no one stayed in the job at the Normanton Toll Gate for very long

1851 – House is empty

1861 – Toll Collector is Sampson Bingham aged 35 and wife, from Normanton (also a framework knitter)

1871 – John Pierpoint, aged 32, wife and family from East Leake (related to the Hangmans family)

1881 – William Green aged 74, an ex framework knitter from Sutton Bonington

In 1877 the Medical Officer of Health notified the Surveyor that the Toll Gate House was not fit for occupation because it was and had been ‘subject to floods’ and must be shut up or put into proper state of occupation. The house was then rebuilt in 1877, but  seven years later in 1884 an Act of Parliament was passed to wind up the Turnpike Trust which was the last one remaining in Nottinghamshire, and on February 12^th 1885 a notice in the Loughborough Herald announced that the trust would close on March 25^th and that the Normanton Toll House was to be sold at auction – the gates, posts and fencing fetched 10/-, fittings and materials of the house fetched £10/15/-, a total of £11/5/- compared to the £175 it cost to build it back in 1877.