Kill’s prominence through its history stems from its situation on the main road from Dublin to the south and south west. The village was a staging post on the old toll road to Kilcullen, the first turnpike to be built (1729). It was here that horses were changed on the three-hour mail coach journey from Dublin to Kilcullen. The Old House, a turnpike inn, was originally built in 1794 and then rebuilt in 1943. Traffic increased dramatically on the road, (designated the T5 in 1926 and the N7 in 1977) in the middle years of the 20th century (2,000 a day in 1948, 3,800 in 1954, 4,500 in 1956, and 6,900 in 1962). Proposals to bypass the village, first published in 1952, were contested by the population, but Kill was the first of the three villages on the Dublin-Naas road to be by-passed when a single carriageway road, 28 feet wide, through the fields of the Old Glebe House to the north of the town, was opened by Gerard Sweetman on 15 June 1956.