The name is presumed to derive from a crossroads where toll payments were collected from travellers entering the city, but the junction did not exist until modern times. In the 18th century a toll, appearing on maps as the "Twopenny Custom", existed at present-day Main Point, at the top of the slope emerging from the Grassmarket where three centuries-old routes into the town from the West converged. The custom, introduced in 1680, was a tax on every pint of ale and beer brewed outside the town walls. Main Point may therefore have been the original "tollcross", the name being transferred from the street known today as High Riggs to the modern junction some time after Lothian Road was laid in 1785 (see The Strangers Guide map of 1805 showing the area before Lothian Road was extended; and the Stevenson Map of 1837 showing the name's migration to the southern end of the street). A milestone opposite Merchiston Castle in Colinton Road marked "1 mile from Tollcross" has clearly been measured from Main Point rather than the modern junction. The other toll in the area, dating from 1792, in consequence of the 1755 Turnpike Act, was at the village of Wrightshouses, on the Wester Hiegait to Biggar (now Bruntsfield Place), roughly where the Barclay Church now stands. Its existence was recalled until recently in the name of the Auld Toll public house on the opposite side of the road before the pub was renamed in 2012.