Mill invites visitors to make journey through travel’s past

A display entitled Broad Lanes – an exhibition of the highways and byways of the East Riding has gone on show in the rural life gallery.

Put together by nine volunteers, it features a collection of photographs, drawings and text showing how the ancient thoroughfares set the course of modern roads up to the early 20th century.

The exhibition begins with the Roman roads that cut through the area, with the Lincoln to York road that included a ferry across the Humber landing at Brough, and a second Roman road that left this route for Bridlington.

The next major development came with the launch of toll roads and turnpikes, which evolved into many of the roads used today.

Volunteer Jean Ross said: “Roads were maintained by a levy through the parish rates and everyone had to work for two weeks for free, but that didn’t work very well and by the 18th century and the industrial revolution the state of the roads was holding back the development of trade, so through the Turnpike Acts groups were given permission to build a road and charge tolls to recoup their costs.”

The exhibition runs until July.