THIS old toll-house used to stand beside the Cringles road as it drops down towards Addingham.
Turner Lane, an older route between Silsden and Addingham, comes in from the right to cross what was originally part of a Blackburn, Addingham and Cocking End Turnpike Road.
The traveller to or from Keighley would have to pass another toll-house at Hawkcliffe on the Keighley and Kendal Turnpike Road.
The travelling public of former days is evoked by the catalogue of those exempted from paying tolls. People going to church on Sundays passed free of charge, as did funerals, the public mails, soldiers on the march, horses drawing ploughs, harrows, other agricultural implements and hay or straw from adjoining land, corn on its way to a mill, cattle going for pasturing or watering, and vagrants being sent to their home parishes for relief.
A special 18th-century proviso for a Bradford to Burnley turnpike road ensured the free passage of “any Horse or other Cattle, or Carriage, going empty for, or returning laden only with, Coals through the Town of Haworth to or from the Coal-Pits at Denholme”.
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