ABSTRACT
The great lacuna in our knowledge of road transport lies in what can be established of traffic in general as distinct from scheduled operations. Map 9.5 depicts mean annual toll income per mile for turnpike trusts within the broad textile-working area of the West Riding of Yorkshire over the period 1822-32. Comprehensive income figures are available only after 1822 when trusts were first required to submit annual accounts to the local Clerk of the Peace. Interpretation of such a map requires utmost caution. Tempting as it may be, trusts’ toll income is not a straightfoward surrogate for turnpike traffic. Variation in the number of a trust’s tollgates can be fairly reliably offset by expressing income on a per mile basis, as already done here. But it cannot be assumed that levels of charged tolls were uniform between trusts. There is also a serious disaggregation problem in using data on trusts’ income rather than income figures for separate gates. However, none of these interpretative difficulties can explain away the evident cohesion of the manufacturing area bounded by the five principal textile towns. Alongside such important thoroughfares as the Great North Road, it stands as a beacon of activity, perhaps testament to the rising fortunes of wool textile manufacture after the mid-1820s.
