Coal tax pillar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coal Tax Obelisk on the railroad in Wormley, Hertfordshire. The inscription reads: 14 & 15 VIC ​​C 146 . It shows that it was originally built on the 1851 border, but was later moved to the 1861 border.
No path was too small for the pillars. This post is in Wormely Wood in Hertfordshire.

Coal tax pillars are border posts , of which there are now around 210 from the original 280. They were set up in the 1860s and formed an irregular circle of 12-18 miles (about 18-24 km) around London within which a tax on coal had to be paid to the City of London Corporation .

history

Coal brought into the City of London has been subject to a tax since the Middle Ages. Since the coal was originally transported by water, tax collection was relatively easy. The Port of London , within which the taxes were collected, extended further than the actual boundaries of the City of London along the Thames from Yantlet Creek (near Gravesend ) to Staines .

In the 19th century canal and rail trade increased and various laws were passed by the English Parliament to include these new transporters in the tax. In 1845, the tax line was drawn 20 miles from the General Post Office in London , from Langley in the west to Gravesend in the east, and from Ware in the north to  Redhill in the south. A law from 1851 allowed boundary stones to be set up to indicate the tax limit. About 50 stones were erected for this purpose.

In 1861 the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act 1861 was passed by Parliament, which limited the area to the area of ​​the Metropolitan Police District and the City of London. This area stretched from Colnbrook in the west to Crayford Ness at the mouth of the River Darent in the east and from Wormley in the north to Banstead Heath in the south. New landmarks (about 280 in total) were placed to indicate the area within which the tax was levied. The boundary stones bear a reference to the law with the indication of the queen's reign and the reference to the section of the law. An inscription reads: 24 & 25 VICT CAP 42 . In some cases, especially boundary stones on railroad lines and canals, the stones made for the first law were also used for the new boundary. While the name of the law mentions a wine tax, these landmarks have nothing to do with a wine tax levied in the Port of London alone. A designation as coal and wine tax stones is therefore incorrect.

The task of these boundary stones was to indicate where the border ran within which the coal tax was levied, so that no one could invoke ignorance in order not to pay the tax. Most of the time, however, taxes were not levied directly at the border. The Grand Junction Canal was an exception . Here customs officials initially collected the tax at Grove Park in Hertfordshire. After the border was moved, a customs house was built at Stockers Lock near Rickmansworth . In other cases, the railroad and canal companies or coal dealers calculated the tax and paid it directly to the Corporation of London. The railway companies were originally allowed untaxed coal for their locomotives.

Types of boundary stones

There are a total of five different types of boundary stones for the coal tax pillars.

  1. Granite obelisk about four feet high, next to canals and navigable rivers.
  2. Iron pillars about four feet high. This is the majority of the boundary markings. The pillars stand next to streets, but also next to field and footpaths, sometimes in the open countryside.
  3. Iron boxes or panels, square about 230 mm on a side, which were built into the piers of road bridges
  4. Stone or iron obelisk, about 4.5 m high, next to railway lines. They were placed on the original border and reused on the 1861 border.
  5. Iron obelisk, about 1.75 m high, erected next to railway lines after 1865.

Almost all of the columns bear the coat of arms of the City of London, sometimes even the full coat of arms. Most of the iron pillars are painted white. The cross and sword of the coat of arms are highlighted in red. However, some pillars are also black with the dirt of the years. Most of the pillars are Grade II protected monuments.

Use of the income

The City of London had had the right to levy charges for the weighing of coal entering the port of London since the Middle Ages. After the Great Fire of London of 1666, Parliament passed various laws to collect taxes, some of which were intended to benefit reconstruction. While some dues were dedicated to general reconstruction work, the majority went towards the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and the city 's churches. Upon completion of St Paul's, the dues were directed to the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. In 1718 the tax was converted into a general government tax, although parts of it were still used for church purposes, such as the construction of Gravesend Church in 1730. During the Napoleonic Wars , the tax was increased several times to pay for the war. State taxes on coal were abolished in 1831.

At the end of the 17th century, the City of London owed large sums of money to charitable foundations for the orphans of the Freeman of the City . In 1694, the City of London convinced Parliament to pass the Act for the Relief of the Orphans and other Creditors of the City of London , which allowed money to be raised in various ways, including the coal tax. This law was the forerunner of the law by which the pillars were erected. In the mid-18th century, the proceeds from the law were used to pay for public works in London, not just the City of London. These included the Blackfriars Bridge , road works in the Temple Bar area and the Ratcliffe Highway , but also courthouses such as the Old Bailey and the Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell. In 1803 another levy was introduced to finance the coal market in London.

The use of money from the coal levy also financed public works in the 19th century. This is how the construction of the Royal Exchange and New Oxford Street were paid for. After the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) in 1855, most of the revenue was paid to it. With this, a uniform sewage system was built in London and the Thames Embankment . The city's share of taxes was used to build Cannon Street and the Holborn Viaduct .

in the 1870s the proceeds were used to make a number of bridges across the Thames duty free. These were the bridges at Kew , Kingston upon Thames , Hampton Court , Walton upon Thames , and Staines , as well as bridges at Chingford and Tottenham Mills over the River Lea .

The end of the submission

The coal tax has always been unpopular and has been repeatedly attacked. The opposition was directed against a tax on a vital good and the peculiarity that the tax only had to be paid in London and not in the rest of the country. Also unusual was the fact that the tax was levied in the Metropolitan Police District, which was much larger than the area in which the revenue was spent. As the suburbs grew, residents increasingly complained that they had to pay a levy of which they had little or no use. That is why the parliament decided in 1868 to exempt the bridges mentioned from a bridge toll.

In the 1880s, the City of London and the MBW wanted to keep levying the levy, even as public opposition increased. But when the MBW was replaced by London County Council in 1889 , the county council decided not to maintain the survey any longer. A law was passed that abolished the coal tax, which was last levied in 1890. The abolition met with opposition, a parliamentary committee found in 1887 that signatures on a list had been forged to maintain the tax.

The coal tax pillars represent the last period of a tax that was levied for over 300 years and which was abolished almost 30 years after its establishment.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 8 & 9 Victoria, Cap 101: "... to any Place within the distance of Twenty Miles of the General Post Office within the City of London ..."
  2. ^ Martin Nail: The boundary marks today: List of extant marks . In: City posts: the coal duties of the City of London and their boundary marks . Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  3. ^ A b Making History , BBC Radio 4, broadcast December 23, 2003.
  4. ↑ Maurice Bawtree: The City of London coal duties and Their boundary marks . In: (6MB download from the Archeology Data Service, University of York Department of Archeology) (Ed.): London Archaeologist . No. 1, Spring 1969, pp. 27-30. Retrieved January 17, 2012.
  5. ↑ Martin Nail: Types of boundary mark . In: City posts: the coal duties of the City of London and their boundary marks . Retrieved January 17, 2012.
  6. ^ The day Kew Bridge became toll-free. in: The Illustrated London News. 15 February 1873, p. 159, accessed on 16 July 2015.
  7. ^ Special Reports from the Select Committee on Public Petitions. House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1873, Volume XI, No. 175, p. 275.

Web links

Commons : Coal tax posts  - collection of images, videos and audio files