Tickhill’s Waywardens

Waywardens were unpaid officials elected annually by parishes. They collected rates and oversaw repairs to roads and footpaths deemed necessary by a paid surveyor. Those waywardens in the area covered by the Lower Strafforth and Tickhill Highway Board, formed in 1862, met every quarter. Rates for each parish (known as a ‘call’) were announced at the start of each year. A good snapshot of waywardens’ activities is given in the Doncaster Gazette for 1870. The waywardens met in the Guildhall on Tuesday, 25 January 1870, and were told that the Finance Committee had met on the 15 January and approved the amounts for each parish for 1870. Tickhill had to raise £280 and Wadworth £108, for example. The money had to be paid in four even instalments over the year and was intended to cover manual labour, team labour, materials and tradesmen’s bills. Joseph Jenkinson was the waywarden for Tickhill at the beginning of the year but by April 1870 he had been replaced by George White and William Kemp. Any official responsible for collecting money would not have been popular and so the burden was shared by having a regular turnover of waywardens.

Waywardens’ reluctance to collect money for highways was expressed by those from Wheatley parish in April 1870 who said the Highway Board should be paid by overseers of the poor out of the poor rate. This was not approved by the Highway Board. The waywardens’ meeting on 6 September 1870, attended by William Kemp from Tickhill, heard from waywardens for Balby and Loversall who wanted the trustees of the Balby to Worksop turnpike road to pay them for repairing the road instead of the turnpike officials paying directly for repairs. William Kemp said he had raised the matter with local farmers at Tickhill but before they gave their consent they wanted to know more about it. They would not object if it saved them money. Parishioners met in Tickhill the following month but decided they would be in a worse position if this arrangement came to pass and so declined.

Apparently, the turnpike trustees could not afford the full cost of paying to remedy the bad state of the road in part because of the increased price of labour. By now turnpikes were in decline, the money raised from tolls not being sufficient (an estimated half of it went in interest payments and management expenses) and the work which was done being inefficient. Only 5 turnpike trusts maintaining public roads survived until 1890 and they had disappeared by 1896.

From the time of the creation of the local Highway Board, the Balby to Worksop turnpike trustees had tried to get the various townships through which the road passed to make a financial contribution to the road’s repairs. The trustees did this initially by applying to the West Riding Police Court to order the surveyors of the townships to make payments, as in December 1862. The court granted this application. The conflict between the turnpike trustees and the parishes was not resolved by 1870. One official at the September 1870 waywardens’ meeting said that the cost of repairing the 15 miles of the Balby to Worksop turnpike road was as much as for 300 miles of roads under the control of the Lower Strafforth and Tickhill Highway Board. It all raises the question - just how poorly maintained was this road?

Another issue aired at the September 1870 meeting of waywardens was the state of some of the footpaths in front of houses in Bawtry and Tickhill as a result of there not being eave spouts. In a storm, water must have poured off roofs in the absence of guttering, drenching any pedestrians passing by and leaving footpaths, not properly paved, in a muddy mess. No wonder houses had boot scrapers by the front doors. The surveyor was requested to see to this complaint.

We know that local people were reluctant to pay money for road repairs from the problem encountered by two of Tickhill’s waywardens as described in the Sheffield Independent, Saturday 22 November 1879, page 12: ‘On Saturday at the West Riding Court, Doncaster, Edward Smith and Michael Hartshorn, waywardens for Tickhill, were summoned by the Lower Strafforth and Tickhill Highway Board for non-payment of a call amounting to £52, due on 30 August. Defendants admitted their liability but stated that the ratepayers refused to pay the rate, some because they were too poor and others because they were not satisfied with the way in which the rates had been disposed of. The magistrates told the defendants they had their remedy if the ratepayers did not pay their rates, and they made an order for the call to be paid, but at the same time issued a summons against one of the parish ratepayers.’ This particular ratepayer was not identified. Problems faced by Tickhill waywardens collecting and handing over money continued. For example, in 1886 Tickhill owed £42 in unpaid calls. In November 1887 waywardens Edward Smith and William Kemp were summoned for neglecting to pay two calls amounting to £86. They agreed to pay £43 within two days and the remaining £43 two weeks later. This clearly exasperated the clerk to the Highway Board who inDecember 1887 said ‘Tickhill was the most ungrateful place under the Board and one that caused the most trouble’. (Sheffield Independent, Wednesday 21 December 1887, page 2.)

At least in December 1887 the Highway Board gave Tickhill permission to plant trees beside the road from Town End (Tickhill Spital) to the Gas Works (near the Garden Centre) in commemoration of the Queen’s Jubilee. A previousmeeting had refused permission as several waywardens thought the trees could become an obstruction.

From 1889 responsibility for maintaining main roads passed to new County Councils, the Highway Boards retained responsibility for other roads. These latter responsibilities passed to Rural District Councils in 1894 from when local people no longer had to act as waywardens. Rural highways became the responsibility of County Councils in 1929.