ABSTRACT

The

original toll road known as turnpikes – dating from the 15th century

– were indeed spiked barriers, but they were designed to be placed across roads

to prevent sudden attack by men on horseback. Later ones were horizontal

timbers fitted with spikes, a version of what is called a cheval de fries, but

the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the mounting timbers of the

originals may have been vertical, since a slightly later sense was of a

horizontal cross of timbers turning on a vertical pin, set up to exclude

horse-traffic from a footpath, which is in essence the device we now call a

turnstile. The word itself doesn’t come from turning spikes, but from turn and

pike, the latter in the old sense of an infantry weapon with a pointed steel or

iron head on a long wooden shaft. It’s the inclusion of turn here that suggests

the pikes were the barrier, which could be turned aside about a vertical pivot

to allow access. From the middle of the 17th century onwards, many

new toll roads were created in various parts of Britain through acts of

Parliament. They were run by trusts, the tolls supposedly being put towards the

cost of maintenance. Early toll gates were modeled on the old turnpike barriers

and so the roads became known as turnpike roads, later shortened to just

turnpikes(words, 2007).