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).
