Oxford Milestones: Yarnton turnpike house and gate
The Yarnton turnpike gate was on the Woodstock Road opposite the turning to Yarnton. It was attached to the cottage that forms the right-hand side of the present Turnpike pub (which was called the Grapes Inn prior to 2001). The buildings comprising the inn date from the seventeenth century (with eighteenth-century and later alterations) and are Grade II listed (List Entry 1210970).
In 1800 the pub's address was given as “The Bunch of Grapes, Yarnton Turnpike”, but it was also known as The Vine, and its address in 1836 was given as “the Vine, Yarnton Gate”. William Fletcher had bought The Vine, described as a leasehold public house, from the Revd Thomas Saunders and was renting it out to Sarah Lay in 1817. (Back in 1809, the landlord had been William Lay.)
The drawing below showing the inn, the turnpike gate, and the toll house is taken from Cuthbert Bede, The Further Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (Part II, Chapter X), published in 1854. The University Proctor in a top hat with his two “bulldogs” wearing bowlers can be seen hiding behind the gate waiting for the hapless Mr Verdant Green and his three friends to pass through on their way back to Oxford from a day at the Chipping Norton steeplechase. They had borrowed a “non-descript vehicle of the ‘pre-adamite buggy’ species” from The Bear Inn for their day at the races. .
In the mid-nineteenth century this was known as Peyman’s Gate, after George Peyman, who was landlord of the Bunch of Grapes Inn by 1847. He ceased to be landlord on 1 November 1852, when the licence was transferred to John Busby, previously landlord of the Boat Inn at Thrupp.