Milestones

The turnpike age arrived in the East Riding in 1744 with a toll-road connecting Hull and Beverley and over the next 50 years others followed, including the road from Beverley to York via Kexby Bridge in 1764.  Milestones, which had been made compulsory in 1767, can be found on almost all of them. 

What is unusual about the East Riding milestones, however, is the number that are not in the common so-called ‘tombstone’ style, but double up as horse mounting-blocks (also referred to as horsing-stones).  They usually have three steps, though a few have only two, quite steep ones.  Historic England, which has listed many of them, describes them as early 19^th century, but some are possibly the original ones from the 18^th century, and many are badly eroded. 

The place-names and mileages are given on a cast-iron plate attached to the top of the stone.  Some of these have been lost, and many are more modern replacements.  The original stones, however, are thought to have the mileage information carved on them: an example on the A166 near Skirpenbeck, 4 km east of Stamford Bridge has “York 11 miles” on a modern plate on the front, but with the original same details carved in an oval cartouche on the other side.  (Illustration on Geograph).

Nearly half the milestones in the East Riding recorded by the Milestone Society are of this type – 51 in all – more than twice as many as in the rest of Yorkshire.  They can be found, for example, on all but one of the six roads leading out of Beverley, and on the Hull-Hedon and Hull-South Cave turnpikes.

Illustrated here are:

• (left) a very eroded example at Walkington, on the Beverley to Howden road.  Lacking its plate the hole by which it would have been attached is clearly visible.  The milestones on this road are of the less common two-step pattern, and the steps are rather steep;
• (right) a plateless stone from Beverley, on the A1035 just west of the town centre;

The restoration of one, Beverley 8 / Malton 20, in 2005 has been documented by the Milestone Society (but not currently traced on website).  The verge level was by then up to the height of the first step, and it was in a dangerous position, having been hit several times; the top step had eroded, and the distance plate was in a sorry state.  The account of the subsequent removal, refurbishment and repositioning in a safer place nearby is a useful account of how it should be done.

Another project was the removal of the Beverley 21 / York 8 stone at Wilberfoss, near the terminus of the Beverley to Kexby BridgeTurnpike Trust.  The Trust was established in 1764, and the road was due to connect from Kexby, on the Riding boundary, to York via the York to Kexby Bridge Turnpike, established a year layer.  Improvements to this road, the present A1079, meant that Wilberfoss was by-passed, and in 2012 the now little-noticed milestone was moved to the new road, where it can be seen by everyone passing with an eye for interesting and historic roadside features.

On some only two steps are visible, but the majority are three-step blocks.  On some two-step blocks it is possible that a bottom step has been covered, following improvements to the carriage-way and associated verge works.  On others the steps are quite deep and so probably were originally two-stepped.  A metal plate of varying design is normally attached to the block.

RWH / Jan 2022

On nearly 70 roads all over the former West Riding of Yorkshire nearly 400 milestones can be found in a standard style.  Attached to a solid rectangular stone column a metal plate shows destinations and distances.  At the top are the names of the road and the township in which the stone is located.  And between these can usually be found the words Brayshaw & Booth / Makers / Liversedge.  For this reason we tend to refer to these milestones as “Brayshaw & Booths”.

Perhaps, however, we should instead call them Steads.

While Henry Brayshaw and John Booth did cast most of them at their (long gone) foundry in Millbridge, it was Gill Stead and his son Frank, stonemasons in Mirfield, who in 1893 tendered for and won the contract from the newly-formed West Riding County Council for “supplying and fixing 615 milestones upon the main roads in the said West Riding”.  A great-grandson of Gill Stead, Brian Whittaker from Stoke-on-Trent, found a copy of the original contract, which is now available at the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Wakefield.

Gill (1836-1904) was born in Mirfield, the illegitimate son (according to the baptism record) of Ann Stead.  The 1841 census records him living with Joseph Stead, a clothier and presumably a relation, and his wife Mary, at Battyeford.  His mother Ann, meanwhile, is living at Bank House, owned by Benjamin Wilson, described as a landed proprietor in a later census.  Bank House, off what is now Francis Street, was then in extensive landscaped gardens.

Ann continued to live at Bank House, as a servant, until 1857 when she married.  She became the third wife of John Gill, described as a labourer on his marriage certificate and a dairyman in the 1861 census.  It would not be unreasonable to conclude that John Gill was Gill’s father.  Did Ann name her son Gill because she loved his father, or to shame him?

Gill does not appear in the 1851 census: apprenticed to become a stone-mason, he was perhaps elsewhere and got left off.  In 1861, now a stone-mason, he is living at Bank House.  Also living there was Mary Taylor, the cook; she and Gill married in 1863.  Later censuses record them with an ever-growing family at various addresses in Mirfield – finally, in 1891 and 1901, on Crossley Lane. 

In 1891 his eldest surviving son, Frank (23), the business partner named in the contract, was also living there.  Ten years later Frank is married with two daughters, but in 1911, with his father dead, he would appear no longer to own the business, describing himself as an employee.  He died in 1919, aged just 51.

Another son of Gill’s, Joseph, who was born in 1871, was also a stone-mason and living with his parents in 1891.  The last census entry for him, in 1911, records him at his widowed mother’s house on Crossley Lane, a stone-mason, a “worker” and married, but other information is frustratingly absent.  His wife, however, appears to be living in Ravensthorpe and taking in boarders.

According to the milestone contract the Steads had to ‘find and provide and be at the expense of all materials, tools, labour, carriage and others matters mentioned or referred to’.  This involved:

• obtaining and paying for the 615 stones, mainly but not necessarily exclusively from a quarry in Horsforth;
• commissioning and paying Brayshaw & Booth (or sometimes other ironfounders) to cast and paint the iron plates – each one different, of course, and sometimes with 150 or more characters per stone;
• transporting them to all parts of the county – from Sedbergh in the north-west (70 miles) to the villages south-east of Rotherham (nearly 40 miles) as well as over the hills to Saddleworth; they may have used horse and cart, or the then more extensive railway network;
• locating where they were to go (a road measurer had been employed to mark these places with wooden stakes), bolting the plates on, and fixing them two feet into the ground (the stones were six feet long);
• and finally when in situ giving them another coat of paint.

And all was to be done within twelve calendar months of the date of the contract.

For this mammoth undertaking they were paid £1,140, or £1-18-0d (£1.90) per stone.  And it was all done between August 1893 and August 1894 as stipulated.

One interesting item in the contract states that the milestones were to be painted blue, with white letters, though almost all the surviving milestones are white, with black letters.  Some do in fact show traces of blue paint underneath, but it is not known when it was decided to change the colours.

One, however, was repainted blue in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee, but with gold letters.  Appropriately in view of the local link this is in Mirfield, on the A62 just west of Stocks Bank Road.  If you’ve passed by and not noticed it, that was probably why they re-painted them white.  

Sources: article by Christine Minto in the Saddleworth Historical Society Bulletin, 2015, vol 45 (1), pp 1-17; census records

RWH / Jan 2022

Roman milestones were generally stone pillars with Latin inscriptions erected when a road was first constructed or when it was repaired. The inscriptions usually give the distance to the next, named, town, as well as the name of the reigning emperor and the particular year of his reign in which the milestone was placed, which allows them to be accurately dated.  Over 100 inscribed Roman milestones have been recorded in Britain, according to the Roman Inscriptions of Britain website.

With the exception of one (or perhaps two), all the nine surviving Roman milestones in Yorkshire are in museums, and can be seen as follows.

Aldborough. There are three milestones from Dere Street, the road north to Catterick, in the museum at the Aldborough Roman site, now in the care of English Heritage.  One, dating from the 3rd century AD, was found in 1776 at Duel Cross, about 2 miles from Aldborough.  It was re-used AD 249–51 and given a later inscription: IMP CAES G MESSIVS Q DECI TRA PO FELICI AVG (To the Emperor, Caesar Caius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, the good, happy and great from…). It is not known why it was re-used, or whether it retained its use as a milestone or was used as a dedication stone. The last line XX C (20 miles from C) was probably from the original inscription. (Milestones of Decius, RIB no 2276; the other two are nos 2277 and 2278)

Castleford. Castleford lies on a road between Doncaster and Tadcaster (Margary 28b), known generally as Roman Ridge or Rigg. In 1861 it was reported that a milestone had been found at Half Acres, just south of the town centre. It was dedicated to the Emperor Florian in AD 276. It was given to the Yorkshire Museum in York, but is now back home in Castleford, at the Forum Museum, on loan from York Museums Trust. Click here for further details (external site),

Hawes. Two milestones from the road through Stainmore Gap, which crosses the Pennines between Bowes (formerly in the North Riding) and Brough in Cumbria are now in the Dales Countryside Museum – one is pictured on the right. The Roman road roughly follows the line of the present A66 (or more exactly vice versa). This was an important part of the road network by which the Romans controlled the Dales.

Leeds. In about 1880 a milestone was found in central Castleford, near the south end of Beancroft Road at the junction with Beancroft Street. It was cylindrical in shape and had two inscriptions on it. The first was to the Emperor Trajan Decius and dates to AD 250-251. Soon after the stone was turned upside down and a new inscription was added to Gallus and Volusian. It can be dated to AD 251-253. It gave the distance to York (Eboracum) as 22 miles. It was bought by Francis Haverfield, later professor of ancient history at Oxford, who presented it to Leeds City Museum.

Pontefract. The so-called Milestone of Florianus, found in 2002 at Rhydings Farm between East Hardwick and Ackworth, in a hedgebank on the line of the Roman road from Doncaster to Tadcaster (Margary 28b) – as the one at Castleford. Now in Pontefract Museum. Click here for further details (external site).

Rokeby Park: a Palladian country house south-east of Barnard Castle, and formerly in the North Riding. Among other Roman fragments is a milestone of Gallus and Volusian (RIB no 2279): found in the 18th century nearby at Greta Bridge on the Roman road from Scotch Corner to Carlisle.

Besides these the so-called Dial Stone at Slaithwaite is thought to have been a milestone from the road across the Pennines between the Roman forts at Castleshaw, in Saddleworth, and Slack, near Huddersfield. A similar stone can be found in the garden of a house in nearby Golcar and may be another one. See separate article.

Other milestones outside the old county are worth a mention. Two are still in or near their original positions. One is at Middleton, near Lancaster: this has been moved to a safe place in the village churchyard. There is an interesting article on it on the Yorkshire Dales National Park website. (Although the National Park was extended into bits of Lancashire in 2016, it has not yet completely taken over the old enemy). The other one is at Temple Sowerby on a by-passed section of the A66 between Appleby and Penrith. There are no traces of any inscription and only its form and location provide evidence of its former purpose.

The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle has a milestone found off the Piercebridge – Gainford road, just over the North Riding county boundary,

Sources: links as above; Historic England; https://romancastleford.blogspot.com; www.romanroads.org; https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/

RWH / Nov 2021

In Sledmere in the East Riding there are two war memorials, near the church and Sledmere House, home of the Sykes family from the mid-18^th century when it was built, replacing an earlier manor house. 

One is a copy of an Eleanor Cross, erected at the end of the 19^th century as a village cross and converted into a war memorial in 1919 for the men of the estate. 

The other is known as the Wagoners’ Memorial.  It celebrates the Wagoners Special Reserve, a unit set up by Sir Mark Sykes, the 6^th Baronet.  He enrolled farm labourers and tenant farmers on the Wolds to serve as drivers of horse-drawn wagons; they had a vital role moving essential equipment during the war.

This memorial, designed by Sykes and constructed by Mr Barr the estate mason, has a sculptured frieze curving round a central column.  This was done by Carlo Magnoni, an Italian artist living in London.  It shows scenes from the wagoners’ history: from enlistment through tearful farewells to active service against a caricatured enemy.  The milestone appears as they leave for France: it marks (correctly for Sledmere) 8 miles from Driffield and 24 miles from York.

The milestone does not resemble those on the western section of the main Driffield-York road (the A166), which runs about four miles south of Sledmere: these are of the mounting-block style.  It is, however, the same shape as the three surviving stones on the B1251 section of the road between Sledmere and York – that is, through Fimber as far as Fridaythorpe – and two on the A166 outside Driffield.  But we cannot be certain what these originally said on them.

Source: Ian Sumner: The Wolds Wagoners: The story of the Wagoners’ Special Reserve (Sledmere Estate, 2000)

RWH / September 2020

While the plates for most of milestones erected for the West Riding County Council in the 1890s were cast at Brayshaw & Booth’s foundry in Liversedge, a small number were made at William Towler’s Globe Foundry in Leeds.  We have no evidence regarding why he was involved, but possibly he was brought in later in the project to ensure it was completed in time.

Towler’s plates can be found on at least four roads in the north of the county: the A629/A65 Keighley to Kendal Road (at Farnhill, south of Skipton, Long Preston and Thornton-in-Lonsdale); the B6255 Lancaster to Richmond Road (on the section in Ingleton as far as the old county boundary); the A683 Sedbergh to Kirkby Stephen Road, at Cautley (illustrated); and the A684 Sedbergh to Hawes road.  From the style it is probable that the other stones on these roads were also Towler’s: the name is not always discernable, but they are slightly different from the Brayshaw & Booths.

The original foundry was in existence in the early 19^th century.  The 1847 OS map shows a foundry off Water Lane on Globe Road in Holbeck, and Towler is first mentioned in Kelly’s West Riding Directory of 1881, where Dyson & Towler are listed as ironfounders on Globe Road.   The firm also had a warehouse or showroom on Assembly St in the centre of Leeds.  This building was originally the east side of the White Cloth Hall, opened in 1777, with assembly rooms on the top floor for the well-to-do in Georgian Leeds.  It has been much altered and the other three sides demolished since, but it survives, is now listed, and is called Waterloo House.

The warehouse advertised chimney pieces, tiles, ovens, ranges, set-pots, mangers, stoves and all kinds of fire-places according to a photograph of around 1900-1910.  [A set-pot is  a stone boiler or ‘copper’, with a fire-grate under, for the purpose of boiling and ‘stewing’ dirty linen, according to Robinson’s Dialect of Leeds and neighbourhood].  They also produced coal-chute covers and grates for drains, which can still be found in the district.  And, of course, milestones.

The company flourished for another half-century, but finally closed down in 1959.

Sources: various items turned up by search engines under ‘towler globe foundry leeds’; the photograph at the top, from the four miles to Sedbergh stone at Garsdale on the A684, is taken from a Milestone Society journal; illustration and listed building detail of Towler’s warehouse at http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=2003103_38804263&DISPLAY=FULL and https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1375290

RWH / rev Jan 2022

The main road west out of Halifax, King Cross Street, splits in two at King Cross, just over a mile out of the centre.  One road, now the A646, leads to Hebden Bridge and Todmorden, and into Lancashire.  The other heads down to Sowerby Bridge and Ripponden, where it splits in two again: the A58 heads over Blackstone Edge to Littleborough and Rochdale, while the A672 heads over into Saddleworth (still in Yorkshire) towards Oldham.

All three roads have interesting histories and different milestones.

The Blackstone Edge road

This is a very ancient road, and was the first to be turnpiked, though the actual line has altered over the years.  Parts are thought to be originally Roman: the Ordnance Survey describes three sections as Roman Road.  Later it was a packhorse road: the paved section coming west off Blackstone Edge is thought to be mediaeval.  It was turnpiked in the 18^th century, the enabling Act of Parliament of 1735 connecting Rochdale with Halifax and Elland.  Rather than continuing from Halifax to Elland there were two branches, one from each town, combining at Ripponden.

Milestones: for some unknown reason, the original milestones were not replaced by the West Riding County Council in the 1890s, and many survive.  From Halifax the first is three miles along the road, just past Sowerby Bridge, though very little of it survives above ground level.  Thereafter all but no 6 survive up to the county boundary, many well-cared-for.

The Elland branch also has a run of the same milestones, all four of which are still in position.  There is also a stone at the junction in Ripponden acting as a guide-stone.  This was refurbished, and the Golden Lion public house opposite renamed The Milestone, in 2011.  Some had their destinations erased to foil any German invaders during World War Two, and some have been re-carved.

The road to Todmorden

The Act of Parliament – for “diverting, altering, widening, repairing and amending the Roads from the Town of Halifax, and from Sowerby Bridge, in the County of York, by Todmorden, to Burnley and Littleborough, in the County of Lancashire” – was passed in 1760, though the road was not completed until 1781.

The road to Burnley (still today’s A646) continued to follow the River Calder through the narrow valley bottom – replacing the earlier Long Causeway which ran over the moors between Burnley and Heptonstall.  The other branch, to Littleborough where it joined the Blackstone Edge road, provided a longer route to Rochdale, but one less susceptible to bad winter weather.  A westward branch off this road led to Bacup and Rawtenstall.

Milestones: from King Cross to Todmorden an almost complete run of very attractive milestones survives.  Most are flat with a sort of roll-top, such as the one illustrated, which is at Luddenden Foot.  They show the mileages to Todmorden and Halifax, with crudely-carved sleeved hands pointing the direction.  The township name is also given, but not always visible now.  Two of the milestones, near Todmorden, are of a different style, being two-sided.

While the milestones were thought to date from the late 18^th century, Luddenden Foot was not created as a separate district until 1868.  It would not normally, therefore, have been named on a milestone. This would mean that they date from the later 19^th century – but before 1878 when the turnpike trust was wound up.  Being still quite new when the County Council was established this may explain why they left as they were.

Identical milestones exist on the roads beyond Todmorden – as would be expected when they were all part of the same turnpike trust.  On the road to Burnley there are eight: three in the West Riding and five in Lancashire (one is lost).  There are just two on the road to Rochdale, with none in Lancashire.  The Bacup road has three, but again all on the Yorkshire side.

The road to Saddleworth and Oldham

The last of the three roads (now the A672), this road was completed in 1798, following an Act of Parliament in 1795 creating the Oldham and Ripponden Trust.  It left the existing turnpike at Ripponden, climbed up to the watershed and went down, briefly through Milnrow and (even more briefly) Crompton (both in Lancashire), back into Yorkshire (Friarmere, the northern part of Saddleworth),and into Oldham, to join what is now the A62 at Waterhead.

Milestones: curiously this is the only one of the three roads to have had its milestones replaced by the Brayshaw and Booth stones of the County Council.  Most of these are still in situ, and there is one of the originals (though scarcely recognisable) just over the border on the Lancashire side, in Milnrow (then officially known as Butterworth).  The Saddleworth mile-posts use the old division name of Friarmere.

A pre-turnpike guide-stoop still stands, just off the present route, but on an earlier line, possibly moved slightly to be a gate-post.  Dated 1735, it has directions to Halifax (7 miles), Huddersfield (8 miles) and Rochdale (8 miles).  The distances are the old customary miles, and the routes a traveller would have taken to reach both Huddersfield and Rochdale are barely indiscernible now: the Huddersfield route presumably led through through Scammonden, and the track to Rochdale could have taken various directions.

RWH / August 2020

This eleven mile piece of road (now the A61) was originally part of the Harrogate, Hewick, Ripon and Pateley Bridge United Turnpike which was an amalgamation of two Trusts in 1852.  Hewick to Pateley Bridge is the current B6265 which also runs eastwards through Boroughbridge to join the A59 at Green Hammerton.  

Harrogate had developed and grown throughout the 19th century because of its spa waters. What had been a small village was taking precedence over nearby Knaresborough with its castle.  Killinghall was at the end of the Dudley Hill (Bradford) and Killinghall Turnpike, at its junction with the Harrogate to Ripon one.

Although the West Riding extended to the north of Ripon the mileposts on this route are different to those found virtually all over the old County Council area. They do not have the backing stone but are cast in a simple V shape. The inscription is rather elegant. The places names with serifs on the letters curve round the numbers and a prominent raised hand points the way on each side.  On the top triangle is the distance to Leeds, with the mileages to Harrogate and Ripon and pointing hands on the two sides.  Underneath these, on both sides, is the name of the iron-founder: J Ingram / Maker / Ripon / 1822.  These details are not visible on all the mile-posts, but are clear on the one illustrated (picture by Christine Minto).

James Ingram is listed as a brass and iron founder in Baines’ 1822 directory, working in Kirkgate, Ripon.  The foundry was actually down Peacock’s Passage.  This was a very narrow covered ginnel between nos 13 and 15 Kirkgate (which leads from the Market Place to the Cathedral).  Ingram was born in 1773, and descendants (presumably) of his are listed at the same address in trade directories later in the century: John George in 1866 (White’s), and William in 1881 (Kelly’s).

Maybe the mile-posts were still in good condition when the County Councils were formed 60-odd years later and the prudent West Riding Highways and Finance Committees didn’t want to spend more than was necessary and replace them.

There is a good run of these posts with only the 7 and 9 miles from Harrogate 9 missing, while the 3-mile post, near the bridge over the River Nidd, is a modern replica.  When the Ripon bypass was built the 10-mile post was relocated near the traffic island. near the bridge over the River Nidd.

Source: a revised version of an article from the Milestone Society’s On the Ground, No. 5 September 2008, p 12.

RWH / August 2020

How about standing on a corner and seeing five milestones without moving?  You can in Yorkshire. Visit Pool Bank, north of Leeds, at the junction of the A660 ‘new’ Leeds to Otley road with the A658 Bradford to Harrogate road and the Dudley Hill to Killinghall turnpike in Bramhope Parish.

In Bramhope and Adel parishes there are at least ten ‘tombstones’ with numerous places listed including Adel Brickyard and several churches and bridges.  The distances are given in miles and furlongs.  On one of these stones, a few yards north west of the traffic lights, Otley, Burley, Ilkley, Addingham and Bramhope churches are inscribed, together with Adel School, Woodhouse Moor and Leeds Bridge.  On the other side of the road about 100 yards away is a triangular cast iron post, one of five on the A660, showing Leeds 8, Otley 2½ and London 194¼.  

Now look up the A658.  Immediately on the left is a ‘Bramhope’ stone with nine places inscribed although some of the distances are erased or eroded.  Then there is a mounting block type complete with metal plate and hands pointing To Bradford 9, To Harrogate 10 – pictured below .  There are four more of these left between here and Bradford but none with plates.  

A little further up is the third and youngest stone belonging to the Dudley Hill, Killinghall and Harrogate Turnpike of 1758.  Dudley Hill is to the south east of Bradford and Killinghall is to the north of Harrogate.  Riding from Dudley Hill you are soon on Killinghall Road although the end is 23 miles away.  There are none of these 19th century stones with protruding metal attachments nearer to Bradford but there are ten complete and one broken one on the B6161 to Killinghall with one on the B6162 Harrogate branch.

Christine Minto

Reprinted from Milestone Society Newsletter, July 2004, no 7