Dolgellau Remembered... Y Twrpeg... The Turnpike The tolls are coming back. But this time there will be no snug little houses with windows that looked both ways to see the horses and carts, and no toll-keepers to gossip with or to curse. The new generation of highwaymen will be beady eyed cameras and automatic debits waiting for you at the month end... and the new tolls won't be pennies. Look at the modest charges listed in the Chronology of Dolgellau. Look at them and weep. And here is something to ponder. The tolls into Dolgellau were not lifted until 1875 but The Rebekkah Riots which forced the Government to end tolls were in 1843. Be that as it may, passing the Toll-house at the top of Y Lawnt was a daily event in my early years when we lived at The Rock. I paid a token fee... I would say "Bore da" to Mr Evans if he was sitting outside with his dog and his canary... and he gave me his memories in change. He was a small man. He said his table in the kitchen had been made from the hollow oak where Hywel Sele's body had been hidden for forty years. I saw the table once. Hywel Sele must have been even smaller than Mr Evans. Across the road was the Old Grammar School and sometimes Mr Evans , seeing a hint of disbelief in my innocent face, would point and say "Hughes bach... if I am not telling you the truth the bell in the Old School yonder will ring. "The school bell must have been stone deaf. But Mrs Evans wasn't. She would rap the window and cut him down..."Chwilydd... for shame... such stories". The house was so small they had to come outside to bicker... all five of them... Mr. E... Mrs E... The son who had been bitten by a Zambezi when he was fighting the Zulus.....turned him yellow and he got a pension for being pregnant and two daughters, the dog, the cat, the canary, a blind goldfinch..." they sing better if you blind them" and sometimes there was a small boy the neighbours called 'pili-pala'. If they wanted water, or needed to make it, they scurried round the corner into the lane which led to a corner where I never ventured. Mr Evans said there was a giant white rat there and if it saw you it would squeal and all the white rats in Wales would come to eat you. The School bell never rang. There was another toll-house at the top of The Bridge... Y Bont Fawr... it watched for funerals and farm carts and over-enterprising school boys who filched sweets from the counter by the kitchen door... Only the Vaughans didn't have to pay... Mr. Evans would spit...' The Vaughans" The lady at the top of the bridge had a huge goitre which she covered with a frantic piece of lace when she came into THE SHOP. Poor woman....she hated us... " I saw you, I saw you, I know you..." It was a test of manhood... to recoup the licorice she had shorted you the previous week. Dolgellau was the metropolis, humming with farm carts, and summer flies which paid no toll, a world where people had time for gossip that could be retold as news until the next hiring day. And the clapped-out school bell would never ring. Up the valley on the Bala Road at Y Garneddwen there was a toll-house for travellers who could still walk after stopping at Y Hywel Dda. Next door to the toll-house was Y Tyddyn Un Nos built by friends in one night to house an evicted farmer who had voted against the landowner's candidate. "You had to have smoke coming out of the chimney in the morning before the big people found out . Then the law was on your side and no rent to pay...." Mr Evans would spit twice. I hear Mrs Evans rapping at the window... "Chwilydd"... ... Craig Parry Hughes 29 November 2004 Back to Dolgellau Memories