Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 578390
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/578390
Externally this ashlar masonry building is essentially in its as-built state and is the best surviving toll house on the road. It was built in 1822–23 by John MacDonald to Telford’s standard design with a shallow pitched roof
and broad eaves, somewhat austere, with little ornamentation except for a quatrefoil through the masonry of the chimney head illustrative of Telford’s fondness for the Gothic style. The total cost of the toll house including land, fences, a stable, pig-sty and privy was £314 0s 11d. The toll house ceased to operate as such after the passing of the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act 1878, and passed into private hands in which it is still. For many years it has been well maintained by the late Norman Miller and his wife Margaret. The widening and upgrading of the road into the dual carriageway A74 in the 1960s bypassed much of the original carriageway. This does, however, still exist from the toll house southwards as a local access road, from which one can still glean something of the road’s former scale and character. The house was up-listed to category A by the Secretary of State in 1988 on the initiative of the Institution’s Panel for Historical Engineering Works. In 1995 when the adjacent A74(M) road works were being carried out, landscaping of the immediate surroundings of the building was undertaken.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
