Spring has brought a stolid sentry to our back gate.

The gate has an enviable vantage point to he who posts himself by its bars. Every dog walker must pass our back gate on the way to the forest.

During this warm spring, the door is flung wide open from dawn until dusk. This means the family dog, Macaulay, may position himself exactly where he chooses.

And he chooses the weighty role of watchman, by the gate.

He stands immoveable for endless ages. It appears that nothing whatsoever is happening in his cerebral cortex. At such moments I wish someone would invent visible thought bubbles for dogs, because I would love to witness a true vacuum.

The moment the outer reaches of his canine peepers catch a movement, he’s off.

If I were to hazard a guess based on non-verbal language, I’d say he was soundly admonishing passers-by .

Safe behind a great big gate, there are no consequences if he is rude or impertinent to very big dogs who could eat him for breakfast. Dogs rarely spend time planning for the future, which is a shame, because if Mac did but know that huge hellhound would get a second crack at him in the forest, he might curb that enthusiastic patter a little bit.

Like a howitzer, row-row-row-row, on and on he goes until the hellhound’s bottom has disappeared from view on the path by our house,  through the gate to the forest.

And the watchman returns to his stolid pose, waiting for the next dog and person combo to which he can give a piece of his monocular mind.

His location, holed up behind a great big gate, seems to make him grow inches and lend him the bravery of Samson. He feels he has a natural authority. He certainly has the power of free speech without prejudice, this much is true.

Tracks from somewhere to somewhere do not make themselves. Someone, somewhere has to pay for them.

The old roads across England were paid for under a system of tolls. But people must be made to pay; and they were not always keen to do so.

So at places where it was impossible to pass without detection; where the road narrowed, or a hill hugged the track, a house would be built.

It was up to each parish, at first. In 1663 Parliament gave local justices in a few areas the power to build houses to charge for major roads which were subject to heavy wear and tear through carts and carriages travelling long distance.

Piecemeal, acts of parliament allowed different roads to be policed by money collectors. By 1840, there were around 5,000 of these oddly shaped watch houses peering over English roads.

Location was the key. Put it in the right place and the money could not slip by. It might cost one shilling and six pence for a coach pulled by four horses, a penny for a horse with no pack and ten pence for 20 cows.

A toll house had more windows than your average house. And later models had a part of the building which jutted out into the road so that under no circumstances could a potential toll slip through the net.

Every toll house had a toll man; he could charge anyone who lived outside the parish. One could speculate that a house like this, in a location like that, with an important office to perform, might be very officious indeed. His office and surroundings might lend him the bravery of Samson.

Macaulay and the toll man: they watch sitting ducks, or at least passing ducks. Events must come to their doorstep. But the watches of old were wanderers, paid to watch the unwatchable: the city at night.

In fact, before there was the Watch, there was the Wait.

Their job was to call the passing hours. Some just called, others, especially at Christmas, accorded each hour a musical fanfare. From the early 1500s, every London borough, and London’s Corporation, had their Waits.

Waiting did not keep the peace, though, in an increasingly edgy city.

In the thirteenth year of Edward III, 1285, a new statute was introduced. The gates of London must be closed every night, it decreed: and the city was to be divided into 24 wards, each with six watchmen.

There’s a set of records called The Remembrancia: I can find out very little about it but it seems to include civil correspondence. I found it wandering through that most prolific of resources, British History Online.

Nestled deep within its archives is a letter from a City official to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, dated October 1661.

It complains bitterly: the night watches are not arranged carefully enough, he protests. The number of men is too small, and the men are “too feeble, to suppress any disorder which might arise”.

And betrayal of betrayals: they desert their watch before daybreak.

In doing so, the official storms, they have let villains go about their dastardly business without being checked or discovered.

Immediate steps should be taken, he adds. More fit and able men should be employed with all speed.

Sound familiar?

Sheer location is generally enough for my dog to administer swift aural justice to all who pass. The toll men needed the right location and an office which gave a certain gravitas.

But those London watchmen: what a strange provenance they had. Were they waiters, watchers, musicians or timekeepers? They had no house to hide behind, nor gate to bark from.

Without these it all came down to a lack of integrity: and a propensity to be feeble.

It is no wonder the days of the Watch were numbered.

Image courtesy of http://liquidnight.tumblr.com/page/94