Before they were roads, they were only paths. Across Dorset, routes emerged slowly, worn into the land by centuries of passage, shifting with weather and season, never entirely fixed. Some followed high ground, others slipped into holloways or vanished altogether, leaving travellers to trust instinct as much as direction. Then came the Turnpikes. Order was imposed on uncertainty. Gates were installed, distance measured, and movement came at a cost. Many modern roads still follow these lines, their origins rooted in a time when every journey was precarious, and the way forward was not always yours to choose.

The 17th Century Landscape

The Development of Turnpikes

Toll Houses

Downfall

The 17^th Century Landscape

During the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the landscape was a maze of prehistoric ridgeways, medieval holloways, and livestock drove roads, all created by geology, water, and ancient human movement. This led to much more fragmented environment, with no planned infrastructure, one very different to today. Routes followed high, dry chalk ridges which were safer, firmer, and offered long sightlines in comparison to the valleys, where clay turned to glue, rivers flooded, and marshes expanded. Sunken lanes, unmettaled tracks and fords, creating a puzzle of islands, meant journeys were slow, seasonal, and unpredictable.

In 1675, fresh out of the Civil War and under the monarch of King Charles II, the Royal Cartogragher, John Ogilby, produced the first detailed survey of England’s roads. He mapped the large network of medieval lanes which were increasingly required for trade, transport and control. Responsibility of their maintenance was down to the landowners only to be later shifted to the parish, but this was often neglected, and the situation needed to be addressed.

Development of Turnpikes

An Act of Parliament in the late 17th century gave rise to The Turnpike Trusts. Their purpose was to make road users, rather than local parishes, pay for the upkeep of the routes and associated bridges. Trusts were given the power to raise loans to repair stretches of road, erect gates, construct tollhouses and impose a toll collected for upkeep.

In Dorset alone over two dozen Trusts were established. Some existing roads were straightened and previously vague routes strengthened while, in some cases, new routes were developed, often parallel with the older valley road but avoiding winter floods. Examples include the Dorchester to Sherborne, Blandford to Shaftesbury and Blandford to Salisbury roads. Tunnels were also introduced to avoid unstable or steep sections. The first tunnel in the country was constructed at Horn Hill, north of Beaminster, with a second soon following at Thistle Hill Charmouth, both opened in 1832.

Local gentry were also able to influence the turnpike development, avoiding the large private estates they owned. At Bryanston, Lord Portman ensured the road did not intrude upon his estate, even paying for Durweston Bridge himself to divert it. At Charborough Park, John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle Drax MP built the longest wall in Dorset to shield his land from passing traffic, which still stands today. Meanwhile, Lord Digby of Sherborne went further still, illegally closing the old medieval road of Pinford Lane to force travellers onto his preferred turnpike at Milborne Port.

Routes of some Turnpike roads were changed. The road from Blandford to Sherborne became defunct, following a later route along the Stour instead. Down on the coast, the little hamlet of Poxwell was, at first, missed by the development of a higher route along the hilltop, which was eventually moved down into the village. Milborne Port, just across the border in Somerset, on the Sherborne to Shaftesbury road, involved a steep climb and so was moved south, cutting across the frontage of Venn House.

The road between Sherborne and Shaftesbury was among the first in Dorset to be turnpiked, authorised by Act of Parliament in 1753. Soon after, the county’s ancient east–west arterial highway, running through Blandford, Dorchester and Bridport, was brought under turnpike control through further Acts of 1754 and 1756. Over the following decade, much of Dorset’s road network was improved, as Trusts imposed order on routes that had changed little in centuries.

The roads grew in national importance. In 1784, the Blandford–Dorchester–Bridport route became part of the expanding Mail Coach system, linking Dorset more reliably with London and the wider country. One of the last major additions was the Wimborne and Puddletown turnpike, authorised in 1840, which cut across the open country near Bere Regis to connect with Wimborne Minster and the east. Along the routes, milestones were placed, initially of stone, then, in the 19th century, on secondary routes, cast iron plates were added, the shape varying between trusts.

Despite these changes, Dorset’s turnpike roads remained vastly rural. They crossed empty chalk downs, lonely heathlands, and wide stretches of unenclosed waste, where a traveller might journey for miles without seeing another soul. Nevertheless, the improvements transformed travel. Better road surfaces, combined with advances in coach design, meant average speeds almost doubled. But these faster roads also carried more money, more goods, and more opportunity, and in such lonely places, not all who waited beside them were honest.

Toll houses

The Tollhouses were often small brick cottages, with distinctive projecting windows, set close beside the road, so the keeper could watch approaching travellers from both directions. He would collect the tolls and open the gates to allow the paying travellers through. But, insisting on payment on such isolated stretches of heath and downland was not always welcome. Many travellers saw the turnpike system as an unfair tax on movement, and tales of protest and violent resistance circulated across Britain, resulting in smashed gates and shots fired. In Dorset and beyond, the vulnerability of these solitary buildings made them both a symbol and target for public frustration and, later, more organised highway robbery, as unlit roads after dark became the haunts of those who would not, or could not, pay.

Downfall

For all their ambition, the turnpikes were not guaranteed success. On the busiest routes, toll income often barely covered the cost of maintenance, especially in the wilder, western stretches of Dorset. Minor turnpikes and tollhouses around towns and along the Stour Valley (Vale of Blackmoor Trust) only added to the burden, creating a network that was expensive to maintain and increasingly difficult to administer.

The arrival of the railways changed everything and by the mid‑19th century, coaching was in decline and bankruptcy common. From 1864, Parliament began to extinguish the less efficient trusts, returning the roads to parish responsibility. By 1889, when all Dorset trusts had expired, main roads and old turnpikes passed into the care of the newly founded County Councils, marking the end of the turnpike system. However, roads were improved, commerce expanded, and the countryside was opened up in way that would shape travel for generations as many of Dorset’s present-day roads still follow these old turnpike routes.

Even so, the golden age of coaching was far from the romantic ideal that is often imagined. Every journey, travellers risked broken wheels, treacherous weather, and the ever-present danger of highwaymen. The turnpikes, impressive though they were, were a world of debt, danger, and isolation, the scenes still visible today, high on the Dorchester to Bridport road (A35), the Dorchester to Sherborne road (A37), and across Cranborne Chase (A354).