Turnpike Roads

31.1. Map 18a

Untrained, unpaid Overseers of Highways and unwilling parishioners, were responsible for road maintenance: great wear on unmade surfaces, holloways or wide morasses, slopes especially bad. Packhorses and carts. Borough streets worst of all, narrow potholed, dangerous, rubbish-strewn. Markets added to encroachments to cause traffic jams: stalls, shop-fronts, cellar entrances.

Turnpike Trusts from later C17th elsewhere, earliest from Birmingham 1726-7: Wednesbury, Stratford, Warwick Roads. Tollgates at junctions, keepers' houses, tolls used in part to maintain the highway, parishioners' labour still used. Early turnpikes little improved, small capital, no re-routing. Bromsgrove Road went via Smallbrook St., Holloway Head, Wheeleys Lane and Road, Arthur Road, tollgate by St. Bart's Church, Priory Road, lost way to dam of Over Mill on Chad Brook, Toy Lane (bottom of Edgbaston Park Road) to Bourn Bridge. Probable that first turnpike to Halesowen went via Edgbaston and Harborne. Later Companies drastically improved roads or made new ones, abandoning worst holloways, village streets, steepest slopes. Hagley Road 1753, direct route to Halesowen: New Bromsgrove Road cut direct and straight from Brick-Kiln Lane (later Horse Fair) to Bourn Bridge, 1771. Alcester Road, 1766-7, abandoned roundabout way via Valentine and Springfield Roads, Barn and Wheelers Lane, cut across undrained Kings Heath. Stratford Road was straightened south of Camp Hill, Warwick Road perhaps re-aligned at Stockfield. Coventry Road bent sharply about Bordesley Hall estate: holloways on Red Hill and through Bickenhill abandoned.

Wednesbury Turnpike cut across heath between several settlements, new ribbon growth along road became West Bromwich. Coventry Road bypassed both Yardley and Sheldon villages. Old Walsall Road 1726 via Hockley Hill, Hamstead Road: new route much later via Newtown Row, Birchfield Road, thence new road to Great Perry Wood. Road to Castle Bromwich and Coleshill 1759, via Saltley crossing of Rea. Dudley Road 1760-1, still very poor 20 years later (Hutton). Pershore Road from 1825: entirely new highway from Jamaica Row to Pebble Mill, 2 straight miles, to Dogpool and 'Stirchley' (formerly Streetley, Strutley) where it follows line of Ryknild Street to Breedon Cross: thence via Cotteridge, Hurst Mill, bypassing Kings Norton, to Redditch and Pershore. Proposals for straightening of Bristol Road not carried out. No road made between Hagley and Bristol Roads: planned motorway link via Harborne Reservoir site, Woodgate Valley, to M5.

Tollgates and houses all gone from Birmingham - tollhouse survives in High St. Smethwick. Turnpikes abolished 1872. Some coaching inns survive, Angel at Ladypool Lane tollgate-, Bull's Head at Four Ways. Old Mermaid, Swan, etc. rebuilt. County provided river bridges. The Deritend bridge was taken down in 1750, and a higher bridge with better approaches was built 1789-1811.