Description:In January 1847 the Trustees of the Stone and Lane-End Road in Longton called a meeting at the Trentham Inn to consider Orders which had been passed ‘for stopping up certain portions of the Turnpike Road, North of the Village of Oulton’. The Trustees hoped to prevent the stoppages which would have a significant impact on the lives of people living in Oulton.
The notice, featured above, states that the proposals would cause the three hundred inhabitants of the village of Outlon ‘to travel in their intercourse with Lane-End and Cheadle, from which places they obtain their Coals, an extra distance of 689 yards’. Inhabitants would also be forced ‘over a road of much worse gradients’. In addition, the Trustees were concerned that the ‘proposed stoppage’ would place the village of Oulton ‘wide of a great thoroughfare’ which would ‘greatly depreciate the value of property there’.
The inhabitants of Oulton were outraged by the proposals which had been made ‘under some misapprehension of their wishes’ and ‘without their knowledge’. The notice appeals to local people to attend the meeting and support the inhabitants of Oulton in their objections to the Orders which they hoped would be resolved ‘without resort to a Court of Law’.
The document demonstrates the active role which local communities played in decisions about their villages and towns, taking practical action to oppose proposals which would affect the lives of themselves and their neighbours.