Swinford and the Toll Bridge
In the time before bridges, people crossed rivers at points where the water was shallow enough to cover only the legs of an adult. At these points men, women, and animals such as pigs,cows or horses could ‘ford’ or wade across the water. People named the area after the ford in the river, for example ‘Ox-ford’ which is a crossing for oxen, and ‘Swin-ford’ which is a crossing for swine, another name for pigs. Oxford , five miles away, was an important town where people around here took their pigs to be sold in the market and carried back goods they brought in the market back to Eynsham and other towns.
To avoid getting wet and muddy people were happy to pay a ferryman who kept a small flat-bottomed boat to take them across the river. There’s still a ferry at Bablock Hythe close by. But even this was dangerous in storms and floods and sometimes people drowned like the four men from Wales who were bringing money to the King Charles 1 in London and whose boat sank under the weight of the gold.
In winter travellers chose to take a much longer way round to get to Oxford in order to avoid the difficult river crossing.
The building of the Toll Bridge
Now Swinford has a bridge, which really should be called the Swinford Toll Bridge but it is usually called the Eynsham Toll Bridge because Eynsham is the main village.
It was the Earl of Abingdon who paid for the bridge to be built in 1769 when George III ruled Britain and there was a lot of building of new roads and bridges to transport goods and people from one town to another in the new style of horse-drawn carriages. The road here was part of the main route from London, through Oxford, all the way to Wales. The modern version of this road is the A40. So the Earl knew that many travellers would be happy to pay money to cross a bridge rather than use a ferry and in this way he would make even more money than he spent building the bridge. A ‘toll’ is the amount of money travellers have to pay at the toll-gate to cross the bridge. Do you know how much it costs to cross the Swinford toll bridge today?
The bridge had to be high enough to allow river boats to travel underneath, so it has 3 arches near the river bank on each side (six arches) which make the middle (seventh) arch of the bridge high and strong enough to carry the weight of carriages and nowadays cars.
Highwaymen in Wytham Woods
When travellers crossed the Toll Bridge to the Oxford side they didn’t travel on the flat land next to the river going to Botley at the west side of Oxford because this was too marshy for heavy vehicles such as carriages. Instead the road to Oxford, the ‘highway’ went over the top of Wytham Woods where the ground was drier. Unfortunately the woods were hiding grounds for robbers who stopped the carriages on the highway at gunpoint and made the unfortunate travellers hand over all their money with the shout of ‘Your money or your life!’. One famously nasty team of highwaymen were the Dunsdon brothers who lived in Burford some miles on the other side of Eynsham. Their names were Tom, Dick, and Harry. They came to a bad end eventually when the victim of the robbery grabbed Dick’s arm as he tried to take the money and closed the shutter onto his arm. Dick couldn’t escape, so his brothers chopped off his arm! Dick died of his injuries but the brothers were soon dead as well: they were caught and found guilty in a court and then hanged.
Victorian improvements to the river Thames at Swinford
Even after the bridge was built, people still used barges on the river Thames to carry heavy materials such as stone from Stonesfield and coal from Gloucestershire, paper and bricks from Eynsham down to Oxford, Reading and London. The great growth of factories and shops in the Victorian age increased the demand in the cities for these materials. So the Victorians were keen to improve the navigation of the Thames by building sluice gates and a new weir and lock to control the flow of the water, especially when there was heavy rain and possible flooding. The Victorians also dug out an area for boats to turn around called a boatslide. Right at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign people decided to cut a new channel for the river so that it ran straight rather than round a horseshoe-shaped bend that it had made itself. You can see this on the other side of the Toll Bridge by the Eynsham lock. But the proper lock with a lock-keepers house that you see today wasn’t built until 1928.
© Catherine Kneafsey
In the time before bridges, people crossed rivers at points where the water was shallow enough to cover only the legs of an adult. At these points men, women, and animals such as pigs,cows or horses could ‘ford’ or wade across the water. People named the area after the ford in the river, for example ‘Ox-ford’ which is a crossing for oxen, and ‘Swin-ford’ which is a crossing for swine, another name for pigs. Oxford , five miles away, was an important town where people around here took their pigs to be sold in the market and carried back goods they brought in the market back to Eynsham and other towns.
To avoid getting wet and muddy people were happy to pay a ferryman who kept a small flat-bottomed boat to take them across the river. There’s still a ferry at Bablock Hythe close by. But even this was dangerous in storms and floods and sometimes people drowned like the four men from Wales who were bringing money to the King Charles 1 in London and whose boat sank under the weight of the gold.
In winter travellers chose to take a much longer way round to get to Oxford in order to avoid the difficult river crossing.
The building of the Toll Bridge
Now Swinford has a bridge, which really should be called the Swinford Toll Bridge but it is usually called the Eynsham Toll Bridge because Eynsham is the main village.
It was the Earl of Abingdon who paid for the bridge to be built in 1769 when George III ruled Britain and there was a lot of building of new roads and bridges to transport goods and people from one town to another in the new style of horse-drawn carriages. The road here was part of the main route from London, through Oxford, all the way to Wales. The modern version of this road is the A40. So the Earl knew that many travellers would be happy to pay money to cross a bridge rather than use a ferry and in this way he would make even more money than he spent building the bridge. A ‘toll’ is the amount of money travellers have to pay at the toll-gate to cross the bridge. Do you know how much it costs to cross the Swinford toll bridge today?
The bridge had to be high enough to allow river boats to travel underneath, so it has 3 arches near the river bank on each side (six arches) which make the middle (seventh) arch of the bridge high and strong enough to carry the weight of carriages and nowadays cars.
Highwaymen in Wytham Woods
When travellers crossed the Toll Bridge to the Oxford side they didn’t travel on the flat land next to the river going to Botley at the west side of Oxford because this was too marshy for heavy vehicles such as carriages. Instead the road to Oxford, the ‘highway’ went over the top of Wytham Woods where the ground was drier. Unfortunately the woods were hiding grounds for robbers who stopped the carriages on the highway at gunpoint and made the unfortunate travellers hand over all their money with the shout of ‘Your money or your life!’. One famously nasty team of highwaymen were the Dunsdon brothers who lived in Burford some miles on the other side of Eynsham. Their names were Tom, Dick, and Harry. They came to a bad end eventually when the victim of the robbery grabbed Dick’s arm as he tried to take the money and closed the shutter onto his arm. Dick couldn’t escape, so his brothers chopped off his arm! Dick died of his injuries but the brothers were soon dead as well: they were caught and found guilty in a court and then hanged.
Victorian improvements to the river Thames at Swinford
Even after the bridge was built, people still used barges on the river Thames to carry heavy materials such as stone from Stonesfield and coal from Gloucestershire, paper and bricks from Eynsham down to Oxford, Reading and London. The great growth of factories and shops in the Victorian age increased the demand in the cities for these materials. So the Victorians were keen to improve the navigation of the Thames by building sluice gates and a new weir and lock to control the flow of the water, especially when there was heavy rain and possible flooding. The Victorians also dug out an area for boats to turn around called a boatslide. Right at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign people decided to cut a new channel for the river so that it ran straight rather than round a horseshoe-shaped bend that it had made itself. You can see this on the other side of the Toll Bridge by the Eynsham lock. But the proper lock with a lock-keepers house that you see today wasn’t built until 1928.
© Catherine Kneafsey