Of toilet paper and tollboards in the Bridge Inn (From The Northern Echo)

Stapleton: Of toilet paper and tollboards in the Bridge Inn

3:16pm Monday 8th February 2010 in Blog By Chris Lloyd, Deputy Editor

MELVYN Carter, quite probably Echo Memories' only reader in Bohai Bay, China, has been in touch regarding the Stapleton tollboard which once was on display in the Bridge Inn (see previous blog):

"My Uncle Harry Eatsforth lived in the row of cottages around the corner on the left as you come out of the front door of the Bridge Inn so it was his local so to speak. I remember visiting him on several occasions 50 or more years ago, and remember that the toilet paper was cut up newspaper, and there was no flush. You just took a shovel of ashes to throw over what you had left down through the hole in the wood which you had just sat on.

"These were the days before even the first extension on the pub, when it was still a small bar and lounge, with a coal fire above which was a well used dart board. In fact, the last time I was in there, the fire was still in the original hearth, despite all the modernisation and extensions. I could tell it was the same hearth because I remember Uncle Harry pointing out to me the worn delve in it where, over the years, people have stood to remove the darts from the board above. Uncle Harry should have known: he played there almost every night and one year reached the News of The World darts finals.

"The toll board was always there in the pub, and was restored twice to my knowledge. I was told it was found in the barn of one of the farms (Nags Head Farm or Springfield Farm, both along the A167 road from Darlington to Hurworth Place) on the other side of the Tees. The toll road this sign refers to is, I believe, the road which ran past these farms and not from the toll booth at the end of the Blackwell Bridge."

This is a fascinating development. Let's do some guessing. "The Stapleton (or Angel Inn) and Barton Lane End Turnpike" road opened in 1833. It ran from Scotch Corner, through Barton, over the new Blackwell Bridge, through Blackwell and quite probably terminated at the Angel Inn. The Angel Inn was an ancient hostelry on what we now know as Bland's Corner where Reg Vardy has his enormous car dealership. The Angel ceased trading in 1873 when it was converted into some kind of school - a Sunday school or a training school for servants. It wasn't demolished until 1971, so if anyone has a picture of it, I would love to see it.

Of course, the Angel Inn was on another turnpike road: the one created in 1745 from Boroughbridge through Northallerton, Great Smeaton, Croft and Darlington before heading to Durham. So therefore it is quite conceivable that the tollboard does refer to this road, although I don't understand why the board has "Stapleton" painted on it so prominently when Stapleton is a North Yorkshire village, and the closest Durham village to the Angel was Blackwell.

Has anyone any theories?

BY the way, while writing this, I've been trying to pronounce in my head what seems to me to be "Staple-ton" as "Stapplton" which appears to be the traditional local pronounciation.