CURTAIN-twitching, that preoccupation with people we dub as nosey parkers, would have been the daily lot of a group of people whose jobs were a vital part of life in past centuries.

Toll house keepers were the folk employed by trusts to collect monies from people using the whole network of roads throughout the UK, including Staffordshire.

The cash they collected would be used to maintain roads which would otherwise fall into disrepair . . . indeed, the turnpikes – as they were called – were created as the UK became more mobile and roads needed maintenance.

Landowners owned many of the roads, having allowed carts and carriages to carve out shortcuts or pathways which became the templates for many of today’s major roads.

Staffordshire embraced the idea of turnpikes in 1740, the first one being created between Tittensor and Talke; a few years later, a turnpike was opened between Stone and Canwell Gate.

Fifty years after the creation of that first turnpike, routes were opened north from Sandon to Cheshire and south to Stafford . . . with the dozens created afterwards came tollhouses and their keepers.

The typical style of such properties were rectangular, having one or two storeys and two side windows to provide all-round visibility for the keeper to keep a lookout for vehicles, driven cattle and carts and to collect tolls from them.

Large boards would announce the various fees and these would often be lit by night to provide a 24/7 service to boost much-needed funds to keep the roads well maintained.

The history and listing of such properties has been told by Tim Jenkinson and Patrick Taylor in their recently

-published book, The Toll Houses of Staffordshire which tells the story of those toll houses which survived and those which were often demolished, ironically, to widen roads as they became busier.

Most toll houses ceased to function from the 1870s but there are survivors, sadly that pioneetring Tittensor-Talke tollhouse on the eight-mile turnpike at Butts Lane was demolished in the 1920s by road widening.

Take a trip on the A5 near Gailey and a round house with a castellated roof may not fit the typical description of a tollhouse but it was; in nearby Penkridge, the Old Tollgate Cottage gives an obvious clue.

A similarly-named cottage in Great Haywood at the junction of Tolldish Lane with the A51 has now been extended but was once occupied by Mary Riley and her son Joseph, a cordwainer (or shoemaker). Indeed, the pattern of tollgate keeper and shoe-maker was repeated throughout the Stafford area.

Head out of Stafford on the A518 and the toll house at Chartley is obvious and though it was given a Grade 2 listed building status, it was de-listed in the 1970s and has since been extensively enlarged.

Sandon Bridge, Weston (close to the Saracen’s Head), Hopton, Hyde Lea, Billington, Rowley Bank, Castle Gate (near the Stafford Castle entrance), Tillington (on the A5013), Gnosall (junction of Wharf Road and A518), Yarlet Hill and the Chebsey were all sites of tollhouses which have vanished.

The Canal Tollhouse at Great Haywood survives and serves as a craft shop but one at Weeping Cross disappeared in a road-widening scheme; other losses include Catch Corner at Acton Trussell, Chebsey and Forton.

Look for a Gate Inn and you may be looking at a former toll house . . . a pub with that name once existed at Littleworth on the A518 at Stafford and replaced a tollhouse which served two major roads into Stafford from Weston and Tixall. The pub is now the Metropolitan bar . . . . not a toll bar but a beer bar!

The book is priced at £9.95p and is available from Tim Jenkinson on 01626 824808. The ISBN number to quote at bookshops is 978 1 907154 07 2.