Wayside and other crosses
All over the country, in towns and villages, and even in the middle of nowhere, you may encounter crosses – usually on a pedestal, some …
As well as the main types of waymarker described on other pages, the Milestone Society and its members are interested in many other types of wayside feature. Needless to say Yorkshire, as befits England’s largest county, has more than its fair share of all these. For more information, click on the various links below.
Most numerous are finger posts, to be found at huge numbers of road junctions throughout the country. While perhaps most have been replaced by signposts in the modern standard style, many interesting older ones survive.
Other stones, etc to be found include:
Take-on and take-off stones. If this were an I-Spy book you would get at least 50 points if you were lucky enough to spot one of these.
Right-of-way stones, such as the Marsden packhorse road stones, subject of a court case in the early 20th century.
Sanctuary stones
Turbary stones
Village signs, originally put up by the Automobile Association, but now almost a new art form.
Other interesting features to be found especially in rural areas reflect the history of our highways: these will be found in our Roads and Travel section.
In addition to the milestones on our highways there are mile-markers (and sometimes fractions of miles) to be found on our canals, such as the Leeds-Liverpool and the Huddersfield (Broad and Narrow) Canals, and the Society also records these.
RWH / updated August 2020
All over the country, in towns and villages, and even in the middle of nowhere, you may encounter crosses – usually on a pedestal, some …
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