Hiding in Plain Sight – the story of the humble milestone

Hilary Jones, Vice Chair of the Milestone Society travelled from Wensleydale, in the heatwave, to deliver this talk and an excellent evening it was.  Hilary explained the importance of the Milestone Society which was created after Local Govenment were relieved of the obligation to protect milestones and now works closely with other institutions to help ensure their survival.

Milestones were first introduced by the Romans but a team from SPAG is currently researching the turnpikes of Rossendale and so our interest was directed towards more recent installations, only dating back a little over a couple of hundred years!  Turnpikes could only be created with an ACT of Parliament and one of the requirements was to place a milestone (or mile post made of cast iron) every mile along the road.  This enabled the user to know how far he had travelled and the toll collectors to charge the relevant rate.

Unfortunately, many have now been lost to mechanised hedge cutters, theft, accidents and road widening schemes but Hilary explained how, with simple tools, she and other volunteers are reclaiming them by cutting back undergrowth and painting them with white and black paint although originally, whitewash and tar would have been used.  During WW2, many were defaced or removed due to the risk of invasion as this fine example in Edenfield demonstrates.

The face shown when approaching the marker shows the distance from the previous martket town, the opposing face shows the distance to the next.  This sounds simple enough but some milestones on the A6 show figures in Roman numerals with fractions of a mile to the side.  II1/2 is not therefore 11.5 miles but 2.5!  I need a lie down now.

For those with an interest in canals, similar mile posts are maintained by the Canal & River Trust and generally seem to survive somewhat better.  With traffic on roads travelling at 60 miles per hour rather than 4 miles per hour on the canals, perhaps this is unsurprising.  However, not all mileposts are old as can be seen in Helmshore, outside the erstwhile White Horse pub which has now been converted to houses – 535 and 537 Holcombe Road.

If you would like to know more about the Milestone Society or even join the 400+ members (as your correspondent has done), please follow this link.