ling and less than ten pounds, and amounting to five pounds, six-pence: nothing under the value of five pounds, being liable to assess

ment.

Land-tax.

This town is assessed in the sum of two hundred and fifty-nine pounds three shillings and six-pence halfpenny for the land-tax. At Lady-day 1818, one hundred and thirty-nine pounds nine shillings and six-pence was redeemed.

SECTION 4.

THE UXBRIDGE ROAD, OR THE TURNPIKE-ROAD FROM LONDON TO UXBRIDGE,-ROCKINGHAM BRIDGE,— AND HIGHWAYS WITHIN THE TOWNSHIP.

The Uxbridge Road.

The road from Tyburn to this place, which is the high road to Oxford, Gloucester and Milford Haven, is called the Uxbridge Road. We have not been able to ascertain when it was made. It is stated that, formerly, the

high road to Oxford did not pass directly through the town, but that at Hillingdon-end, it went through the grounds now in the possession of J. Chippindale, Esq. and so skirted the town to the northward, and crossed the Coln some distance above the present highbridge. This was most probably the case up to the time when a bridge was first erected for carriages, which we have shewn was in the reign of king Henry the Eighth. See chap. i. sect. 6. Some have affirmed that it was the case much later, but we have not been able to ascertain more than the fact, that the high road to Oxford did once pass on the north side of the town. The alteration of making the highroad pass through the town has doubtless been of considerable advantage to the inhabitants, and has imparted an air of bustle and activity to the place. The facility of travelling must also have been greatly increased by it.

The present Uxbridge road passes through the following parishes;-Paddington, Kensington, Fulham, Hammersmith, Acton, Ealing, Hanwell, the precinct of Norwood, Hayes, and Hillingdon. Formerly each of these parishes repaired the part of the road within its own boundary, but this being found troublesome, and unnecessarily expensive to them, as well as injurious to the public, an Act of Par

liament was passed in the first year of the reign of George I. (1714) which empowered certain trustees to collect tolls for repairing and amending the highways between Tyburn and Uxbridge. Several acts have since been passed, which have much altered and enlarged the powers of the original act. The last of these was passed in the fifty-fourth year of the reign of George III. (1814.)

Mr. T. Lediard, jun. in his "Plan of the Great Road from Tybourn to Uxbridge," a copper-plate engraving of which is appended to the Oxford edition of the statute 7 George III. printed at the Clarendon Press in 8vo. 1769, makes the total distance from the turnpikegate at Tyburn to the Three Horse Shoes, afterwards called the Catherine Wheel, and now the Rose and Crown, in Uxbridge, by his admeasurement, fourteen miles six furlongs and thirty-seven poles.

Middleton in his survey of Middlesex, speaking of this road, after observing that it "is supposed to have more broad-wheeled waggons pass over it than any other in this county, or perhaps in the kingdom," says

66

During the whole of the winter 1797-8, there was but one passable track on this road; that

was less than six feet wide, and it was eight inches deep in fluid sludge. All the rest of the road was from a foot to eighteen inches deep in adhesive mud."

"This track was thronged with waggons (many of them drawn by ten horses, and most of them having broad wheels, even to sixteen inches wide) and farmers' six-inch-wheel carts, which occupied almost the whole of this confined space. It was therefore with great difficulty, and some danger, that horse-men and light carriages could pass."

"The road continued in this bad condition during the whole winter half-year. No exertions were made towards cleansing it, although an expenditure of such a trifle as thirty pounds, in the employment of a road scraper, drawn by two horses, would have kept it moderately clean and dry; and would also have prevented the unnecessary destruction of upwards of three hundred pounds worth of materials, that were reduced to powder by being soaked and ground, for six months, in water mixed with broken flints."

"The only labourers to be seen on the road, during several succeeding months, were those

of a neighbouring gentleman, and they were employed in carting the footpath into his enclosures."

The acts passed at different periods relating to this road are the following: George I. c. xxv. -12 George I. c. xvii.-15 George II. c. ix.17 George III. c. cii.-34 George III. c. cxxxi. -42 George III. c. lxxvii.-and 54 George III. c. ccix. Notwithstanding the numerous acts which have been passed, this road till very lately was notoriously bad. It has, however, been much improved within the last three years. In many parts it has been widened, and is now kept in much better repair than at any former period; and we hope the complaints and execrations it has so long excited from wearied and retarded travellers, will no longer be justly merited.

Rockingham Bridge.

A part of Cowley or Uxbridge Moor, in the parish of Hillingdon, having been taken for cutting and forming the Grand Junction Canal, the land was valued by the commissioners under the Act of Parliament, and the purchasemoney. amounting to seven hundred and seventy-six pounds fifteen shillings and two pence, vested in the funds, in the names of