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The word milestone today is usually taken to mean a significant event rather than a stone beside the road marking the distances to various
places. For several centuries milestones were almost the only items of street furniture. Apart from letting travellers know where they were and how far they had to go, they were used to time mailcoaches and
walking races, work out the cost of postage and of hiring horses. Milestones were paid for by turnpike trusts, public subscription, landed gentry and local authorities. They acted as advertisements for iron
foundries and status symbols for the estate owner and they doubled as boundary markers, water pumps, memorials and mounting blocks. From a study of milestones much can be learnt about the history of roads and
their users over the past three centuries.Milestones are now rapidly disappearing and there is a growing awareness of the need to preserve this forgotten part of our heritage. A
curiosity with these wayside markers led the author to track down the surviving milestones in her own county. Tracing their history generated a deeper fascination with the subject and resulted in this book, the
first in-depth study of milestones in England. |
