Coal-tax post

Coal-tax obelisk by the railway at Wormley, Hertfordshire. The inscription reads: 14 & 15 VIC C 146, showing that it was originally erected on the 1851 boundary before later being moved to the 1861 boundary

No byway was too small to evade the liability for coal tax. This post is on a footpath in Wormley Wood, Hertfordshire

Coal-tax posts are marker posts, now numbering about 210 but originally about 280 in number, erected in the 1860s and forming an irregular loop between 12 and 18 miles from London, England, to mark the points where taxes on coal were due to the Corporation of London.

History

Coal imported into the City of London had been taxed since mediaeval times and, as it was originally all brought by sea to riverside wharfs, the collection of the duties was relatively easy. The City is a small (one square mile) but influential part of London. The Port of London, within which the duties were payable, stretched far beyond the boundaries of the City, all the way along the Thames from Yantlet Creek (downstream from Gravesend) to Staines.

By the 19th century, however, there was increasing trade by canal and rail, and various acts of parliament extended the catchment area to include these new modes of transport. In 1845 the boundary was set at a radius of 20 miles from the General Post Office, London, from Langley in the west to Gravesend in the east and from Ware in the north to Redhill in the south. In 1851 an Act permitted the erection of boundary markers to indicate where this boundary lay; and about 50 markers, inscribed with a reference to the Act, were erected.

In 1861 a further Act — the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act 1861 — was passed, reducing the area to that of the Metropolitan Police District plus the City of London. This stretched from Colnbrook in the west to Crayford Ness, at the mouth of the River Darent, in the east, and from Wormley, Hertfordshire in the north to Banstead Heath, Surrey in the south. New marker posts (about 280) were erected to show the boundary within which the duty was payable. These again cite the Act by regnal year and chapter number, ie 24 & 25 VICT CAP 42. In some cases, notably on railways and canals, markers made for earlier acts were reused on the new boundary. Most (over 200) of these posts survive. Although the title of the Act refers to wine duties, these were collected only in the Port of London: the boundary marks have no connection with the wine duties and it is incorrect to call them "coal and wine duty posts".

The purpose of the posts was to give notice of where the boundary ran so that no-one could claim ignorance of liability to pay the duties. However, in general, duties were not actually collected on the boundary. The one known exception was the Grand Junction Canal: originally customs officers collected the duties at Grove Park, Hertfordshire. After the boundary was changed in 1861 a permanent house for the collector was built at Stockers Lock near Rickmansworth. In other cases the railway and canal companies or local coal merchants calculated the sums due and paid the money to the Corporation. The railway companies were initially allowed some coal free of duty for their engines.

The erection of these posts was very much a last ditch attempt to retain the tax in the face of growing opposition. The tax had been collected for over 300 years but within 30 years of the posts going up it was abolished. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing; London was expanding rapidly. The outer suburbs were becoming towns and their residents beginning to resent paying a tax which had very little direct benefit for them.

The powers to levy these taxes were abolished in 1889, though the City had fought against the abolition with some underhand tactics: a parliamentary select committee sitting in 1887 found that signatures on a petition in support of keeping the tax had been forged.

Types of post

There are five different forms of coal duty boundary markers in all.

1. Granite obelisks, about 1.2 metres high, erected beside canals and navigable rivers.
2. Cast-iron posts about 1.2 metres high. These form the majority of posts and are found beside roads — and also beside tracks and footpaths, sometimes in open countryside.
3. Cast-iron boxes or plates, about 230 mm square, built into parapets of road bridges.
4. Stone or cast-iron obelisks, about 4.5 metres high, found beside railways. Originally erected on previous boundaries and reused on the 1861 boundary.
5. Cast-iron obelisks, about 1.75 metres high, erected on railways after 1865.

Almost all bear the City's shield or in some cases the full coat of arms. Most of the cast-iron posts are painted white, with the cross and sword of the shield picked out in red, but the stone ones are often of a sombre black, still bearing the stains accumulated on the smoky trackside. Most of the posts are Grade II listed buildings.

See also

• The London Stone in Staines is very much older but lies on the line of route of the posts
• Close-up image of the shield
• Two posts near Tattenham Corner

External links

• "Coal Tax Posts". Corporation of London. http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Leisure_and_culture/Local_history_and_heritage/coal_posts.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-06. 
• Nail, Martin. "City posts: the coal duties of the City of London and their boundary marks". http://www.coaldutyposts.org.uk/. Retrieved 2012-01-15. 
• "List of posts with links to image galleries". http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/coalwine/postlist.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-18.