Swinford Toll Bridge is for some an archaic tax while for others it is the way ahead, writes CHRIS KOENIG

Campaigners against the tolls on Swinford Bridge, among them two West Oxfordshire councillors, claim that collecting tolls is an extremely old-fashioned way of maintaining roads.

Right and wrong. Rewarding an entrepreneur with 'pontage' for his public/private finance initiative in building and maintaining a bridge for public use goes back to pre-Norman Conquest times.

On the other hand, charging tolls for, say, using the Dartford Crossing or the M6 Toll road, is seen as a modern way of financing a project.

Swinford Bridge, at either end of which many of us queue morning and evening five days a week in order to hand over our 5p to a toll collector (or turnpiker, as they were once called), was opened in 1769 to replace a ferry in which, rumour has it, a Royal passenger in the shape of George III had once upon a time received a wetting.

It was part of an initiative undertaken by eminent Wallingford lawyer Sir William Blackstone, wearing his hat as administrator of the estates of the Earl of Abingdon, which included Swinford.

Under his idea, the derelict Botley causeway from George Street (formerly Thames Street) in Oxford, much damaged from frequent flooding, was repaired, and the road to Witney opened to heavier traffic. The clever lawyer made sure that the bridge would pay for itself through tolls, but he could not have envisaged 10,000 vehicles passing over it each day.

In the 1960s the bridge and its tax-free tolls passed from the Earl of Abingdon to the Smith family of Worcestershire, who still own it.

The name Swinford derives from Swine-ford, a ford for swine, much as Oxford means a ford for oxen, or Shifford (sheep). The fact is that ways across much of pre-Conquest Oxfordshire consisted of a series of fords enabling Saxons and their herds to "island hop" over the flood plains.

First reference to a bridge in Oxford dates from 1004 in a document mentioning a crossing of the Cherwell on the site of what is now Magdalen Bridge but in Norman times was called Petty Pont.

The first Norman governor of Oxford, Robert D'Oilly, replaced the original oxen ford with Grandpont (now Folly Bridge) shortly after his appointment as governor by William the Conqueror. It was repaired extensively in the Middle Ages with money raised through 'pontage' collected by hermits. In 1825 the present bridge was built.

But a bridge at Radcot is mentioned in a grant of land as early as 958, though the present bridge dates from the 14th century.

Traveller John Leland, who left an account of his journeys through the Oxfordshire countryside before the Reformation, described what is perhaps the county's finest medieval bridge, namely the one at Newbridge at the junction of the Thames and the Windrush, in the 1530s.

He wrote: "The ground there all about lyeth in low meadowes often overflowne by rage of reyne" (No change there then, judging by the flooding last month of the pubs at either end of the bridge.) But back to the tolls at Swinford. If it is the road-charging by a private individual which annoys modern motorists, rather than the delays caused by collecting the money, here is another annoying thought for them.

Under the Act of Parliament that allowed the tolls, the bridge owner may impound the vehicle of anyone not paying!