Description:Amongst papers relating to Eccleshall in the Sutherland Papers is a ‘General Statement of the Income and Expenditure of the turnpike Road from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Eccleshall’. The document forms an account of income and expenditure on the turnpike road for two years, from 29th September 1829 to 29th September 1831. The accounts were overseen by the Trustees who had invested in the construction of the road.
The document lists expenditure incurred by the Trustees on the road, including clerk and surveyor’s salaries. The surveyor’s salary for two years was £60, whereas the clerk’s was £15, 15 shillings. Three pounds and one shilling was spent on ‘Printing and Stationery’, and three pounds, seventeen shillings and a penny were spent on ‘making Tables of Tolls’.
Other expenditure was incurred in ‘Disbursements made through the hands of the Surveyor’. This included costs for team and day labour, the ‘Rent of Toll Houses’ and for other work on the road itself. ‘Work executed by contract’ is also listed, including ‘Getting and Cleansing Gravel’ and ‘Reforming Road and Cleansing Side Drains’.
The ‘Purchase and Repair of Tools’ cost ten pounds, one shilling and eight pence, and the purchase and repair of bricks amounted to twenty three pounds, thirteen shillings and tuppence. Other charges were incurred by the ‘Construction of Bridges’.
Next to the details of Expenditure on the turnpike Road are details of the ‘Income’ made by the road. The income figures suggest that the trustees of the turnpike road made money by selling old materials. Five pounds, ten shillings and five pence was made through the sale of ‘Old Materials’ between 1829 and 1831. The Trustees also received money through payments from townships that made use of the road. Payments amounting to £150, 6s and 3d came from Beech, Clayton, Clayton Griffith, Cotes, Hanchurch, Mill Meece, Newcastle, Slindon, Swynnerton, Trentham and Eccleshall. Eccleshall paid a total of £21 over three years for use of the turnpike road.
However, the Trustees also had to pay out monies for various reasons – listed in a column headed ‘debts’. These included ‘Debt to the Corporation of Newcastle, being for Purchase Money of a House taken down for the Road’. This debt amounted to forty pounds. In addition to this, payments for ‘Bills for Postages, Stationery, Printing and Advertising' had incurred a debt of six pounds and ten shillings.