LLANNON: Historic tollgate cottage from the age of the Rebecca Riots goes under the hammer

A cottage built to collect the hated road tolls that drove west Wales to riot is going under the hammer.

Gate House — standing on the junction where the B4306 to Pontyberem meets the A476 in Llannon, with traffic passing on both sides — heads to online auction this month with a guide price of £69,000+.

The cottage stands on the old turnpike road from Llandeilo to Llannon — part of the toll road system established by the Three Commotts Turnpike Trust in the late 18th century, following the route of today’s A476.

Gate House was built in the 19th century as the village’s toll house, charging travellers, farmers and their loaded carts each time they passed along the road.

Gates at junctions, where traffic from more than one road could be caught, were among the trusts’ best earners — and Gate House sits exactly so, where the two roads meet.

It was that system — tolls piled onto struggling farming communities already squeezed by rents, tithes and poor rates — that lit the fuse for the Rebecca Riots, and the fuse was lit in Carmarthenshire: the first gate destroyed stood at Efailwen, attacked in 1839, rebuilt, torn down again by a crowd of hundreds — and never replaced.

Over the years that followed, bands of men disguised in women’s clothing — “Rebecca and her daughters” — rode out at night to smash tollgates across south-west Wales, taking their name from the Book of Genesis: “let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.”

The rioting came close to Llannon’s gate. In July 1843, around 200 men destroyed the Bolgoed tollgate on the edge of Pontarddulais — and that September, a few miles away at Hendy, 75-year-old gatekeeper Sarah Williams was shot dead as her gate and tollhouse were attacked, the only death laid squarely at Rebecca’s door.

And Rebecca came to Llannon itself. In August 1843, rioters attacked Gellywernen, the home of the village’s land agent John Edwards — an assault the authorities took seriously enough to put up a £500 reward for information, a fortune at the time.

The unrest forced a royal commission and an Act of Parliament in 1844 that consolidated the turnpike trusts, halved the hated toll on carting lime and limited how many gates could stand on a road — and where gates and toll houses had been destroyed, they were rebuilt.

The toll collector’s cottage survived the age that raged against everything it stood for — and it has watched the traffic pass, un-tolled, ever since.

The tollgate’s grip on the national story endures: writing for WalesOnline, Bangor University historian Dr Lowri Ann Rees once made the case for it as the most important object in Welsh history.

Nearly two centuries on, Llannon’s is looking for a new owner.

The cottage is being offered by Paul Fosh Auctions, which says it “offers much character”, with a secluded rear garden, an outbuilding and parking for two cars.

Inside there are two reception rooms, a kitchen/dining room and a bathroom on the ground floor, with two bedrooms upstairs — and a ground-floor sitting room that could serve as a third bedroom.

The listing notes double glazing and electric storage heating, which the auctioneer says has not been tested.

The firm suggests the cottage could make “a lucrative holiday let or rental investment” given tourism in the area, and it is being sold with vacant possession.

The £69,000+ figure is a guide price — generally an indication of the seller’s minimum expectation, with the reserve usually set within the guide range or no more than 10% above it.

Buyers at the firm’s auctions also pay a premium of 1.5% of the purchase price, subject to a minimum of £2,400 for sales above £50,000, with other costs set out in the legal pack.

Bidding opens when the online auction begins on Tuesday 28 July, with the sale closing on Thursday 30 July.

Llannon sits on the A476 around 11 miles south-east of Carmarthen, with the wider community taking in Tumble and Cross Hands.