Bow Bells mileposts

Number 43 is in the centre of Uckfield

I think many people will have heard of the Bow Bells, the bells on the Church of St Mary-le-Bow in London’s Cheapside: you can’t call yourself a true Cockney unless you were born within earshot of those bells ringing. But I wonder how many people know that the Bow Bells also have a part of play in measuring road distances.

On the old main road south from London to Lewes, the distances were once measured from the church door of St Mary-le-Bow, and mileposts – decorated with bells and marking the miles from the London church – were placed alongside the route so travellers knew how far they had journeyed, or had still to journey, if they were travelling towards London.

The Public Sculptures of Sussex website reports that the mileposts lining much of this road – now the A22 and parts of the A26 – are thought to be the longest sequence of mileposts in England, though sadly many have been removed, lost and/or stolen.

Photo © Peter Jeffery
(cc-by-sa/2.0)
geograph.org.uk/p/4541557

The mileposts were commissioned around 1754 by the Union Point to Langney Bridge Turnpike Trust, which was responsible for the maintenance and smooth running of the coach road. The posts were mostly made of cast iron and show a varying number of bells hanging from a bow – perhaps originally they all had five but some have eroded over time – dwindling in size from the top of the milepost to the bottom. 

At the top of the post, above the mileage figure, most of the posts show a single black dot (as shown in my photographs, of numbers 43 and 53) but those in the area around Halland, the 44 to 54 mileposts, have a buckle (as shown in the photo at right, by Peter Jeffery, used under a Creative Commons licence, as credited).

The buckle represented the Pelham family who were local landowners involved in financially backing the turnpike’s extension southwards in the 1750s. The Public Sculptures website again:

In 1356 at the battle of Poitiers a local knight Sir John Pelham together with Sir Roger de la Warr captured Jean the King of France, [and] because of this Sir John was given the King’s belt buckle as a badge of honour. This badge can be seen on many churches and buildings in the area around Laughton showing the influence and power of the Pelham family.

The number 53 milepost in my photograph is actually a replica from a museum in Lewes and, as the sign alongside explained:

Bow Bells milestone, Lower Dicker, Sussex.

This is a cast iron replica of a milestone from a series on the turnpike from Uckfield to Langney Bridge prior to 1810 and marks the distance of 53 miles to London.

The original of this post should bear the Pelham Buckle, intended as a mark of respect for this family and found on all mileposts situated on their land. In this case the buckle has been replaced with the more usual dot.

So far I have only photographed two of these historic mileposts, though I’ve seen a few more whilst travelling along that road, and I’ve managed to track down the location of several others that I hope to photograph in the future.

I find these physical reminders of Britain's history incredibly fascinating and hope they continue to be preserved (and not stolen!) for future generations to appreciate.

Going the extra mile … post

Before the days of odometers, satnav, GPS and TomTom, travellers could only measure distances travelled by looking at the numbers marked on signposts along the way. (In fact, the less gadget-obsessed amongst us – like me! – still do.)

Here in Britain, the original mileposts were milestones – actual stones, laid by the Romans to mark every one thousandth double-step, which was their way of calculating distance. The Latin for thousand was mille, hence the word ‘milestone’. Though one thousand Roman double steps equated roughly to 1618 yards, the eventual British standard measurement for a mile was 1760 yards. Maybe the British had longer strides!

According to the Mile Stone Society, there are around 9000 waymarkers still surviving around Britain, though many thousands more have been lost to thieves, collisions with cars, destruction by hedge-cutters, or removal during the Second World War, when the intention was to confuse the Germans if they invaded. The notion of reaching a significant point along the road has, of course, led to our more modern idea of a milestone as an important event or stage in life, progress or development.

Since moving to Cardiff, I’ve been gratified to see that many of the old mileposts still exist and that most are listed structures, so protected from destruction, though some have been moved in the course of road widening and motorway building. Because of their status I’ve managed to locate several posts by searching the British Listed Buildings (BLB) website and have walked many a mile to photograph them. These are they … and more may follow in the future as I continue to roam the roads and trails of my newly adopted country.

1) Westgate and Castle St corner   

We start first near the centre of Cardiff, with one in a series of mileposts that mark points along the route of what is now the A48, a road that was once the principal route between the south-west of England and south Wales (the construction of the Severn Bridge in 1966 changed the course of that link somewhat).

Made of moulded cast iron in a rather ornate style, this milepost has survived remarkably well when you consider it is 180 years old and located near the centre of a busy city.

2) 240 Cowbridge Rd East  

One mile down the road we come to the second in this series along the western section of the A48. The style is the same as the previous milepost but, as you can see, in that short distance we have moved from Cardiff town to ‘Landaff Parish’ (now known by its Welsh spelling, Llandaff), and further away from London.

3) A48 near Gabalfa interchange  

Next we cross town, and the River Taff, to find a milepost that now sits adjacent to the Gabalfa interchange on a slip road that gives access to the eastern section of the A48, here called Eastern Avenue. According to the BLB website, this post is ‘shown on the Ordnance Survey [map] of 1880’ and ‘was located at the junction of two important routes out of Cardiff, Merthyr Road and Caerphilly Road.’

4) West boundary wall of Lidl supermarket car park,
Caerphilly Rd  

What a wonderful find these two stones were at the end of quite a long walk! Though differing in design from the previous mileposts, the newer one (on the left above) almost certainly dates from around the same time, the early 1830s, and was erected when improvements were made to the road that ran from Cardiff through Caerphilly to Merthyr.

The stone – literally, a stone – (shown in close up here to the left) probably dates from the late 1700s and, though I couldn’t read the inscription, it appears to mark the same route as its more modern neighbour. 

The BLB website notes that both stones have been re-sited, as they appeared in a more northerly position on an 1898 OS map.

How marvellous that both have survived.

5) 273 Cowbridge Rd East  

We return now to Cowbridge Road East, in Canton, as this milepost (in the photograph at right) is located between numbers one and two above. (Don’t be mislead by the street number; they are simply more numerous on this side of the road.) 

This milepost is not one of the A48 series, however. It has been moved from its original position and is one of a series that mark the Cardiff-Llantrisant turnpike. Though it is undated, it was probably erected in the early to mid nineteenth century.

6) Cardiff Rd, Llandaff

The milepost shown below is the second in the Cardiff-Llantrisant series and is located near the entrance to Llandaff village, the historic ‘city within a city’ as the locals say. The BLB website provides some interesting additional information for this entry:

The turnpike toll-house stood at the junction of the Llantrisant Road with Bridge Road in Llandaff, about 500m north. The toll-house was demolished in the late C19. The milepost was sited in its present position when Cardiff Road was widened at the junction with Western Avenue in 1976.

7) Albany Road, Roath

This last milepost was a bonus find when I was out walking one day, as it isn’t included on the BLB website. Yet, just like several of those above, it is a cast-iron milepost with a flat back, canted faces and top, so probably also dates from the 1830s. It has suffered a little damage over the years, with either a four or a two missing from the mileage shown on the top.

As you can see, the sizes and shapes of these old mileposts vary quite considerably but their functions are the same. And I’m sure that in the days of hot dusty journeys in bum-numbing horse-drawn coaches along bumpy pot-holed roads, both the coachmen and their passengers would have been very glad indeed to see that final post that read ‘Cardiff 1'!