Old UK Milepost Found and Restored

[RoadDog]

I came across a very interesting article in the July 5th UK Comet. It is about a milepost dating back to the Parliamentart Act of 1724 that was recently found buried in a field.

I doubt that there are any signs of that vintage here in the US. How it got buried is interesting as well. During WWII, it was removed from the roadside of Highway A1, the Old North Road (I've also saw it called the Great North Road in further research). It gets better, the reason it was removed was so that German soldiers would not know where they were. Now that is VERY interesting. Things were going so badly that there was an imminent fear of an invasion.

An old man told the new landowner that he remembered seeing it buried as a lad of seven. A search of the field was made and it was found by a hedgerow.

This is an exceedingly rare find as very few of that age survive today.

It was restored by the Milestone Society and reerected at Lower Caldecote on a service road of A1. This service road was an original alignment of the OId North Road which dates back to the days of the Romans.

In Britain, the "A" roads are essentially like the US Highways, Their Motorways, or "M"s, are comprable to US interstates.

Now, That's What I call an Interesting Story. --RoadDog

[UKCraig]

Thanks for the tip - any links so that I can see where in Lower Caldecott it is located? I travel past there on the A1 (yes, it's known as the Great North Road but it is possible that certain - bypassed - sections are known as Old North Road) pretty regularly.

As you say, we have A-roads, B-roads, unclassified roads and motorways. The latter is our equivalent of your interstates (although they are far far busier than anything other than the busiest roads around LA). We also have E roads (pan-European roads between the major European cities) but, being the great Europeans that we are (haha) we don't signpost them or bother to include them on our maps!

As to the signposts being removed - that is absolutely true. There are several old Victorian lamp posts and signs still in place in central London (I guess they thought if the Germans had made their way there then a couple of signs being missing wasn't actually gonna slow them down too much!) but elsewhere anything pre-war is pretty unusual.

Another reason they were removed - along with cast iron railings, gates, guttering, etc - was that we were so short of materials from which we could make planes, tanks, guns and other munitions that we had no choice, until the Lend-Lease Programme kicked in, but to remove these things from all around the country and melt them down!

[RoadDog]

I must have deleted the site.

Extremely interesting story though. A picture did accompany the story and you should be able to see it easily enough. I think it said it was on the north service road.

We went on a Princess cruise around the British Isles last July and also had an eight day bus tour through Great Britain. Mighty beautiful countryside. We especially liked Cornwall and Wales.

[UKCraig]

I'll look out for it next time I'm up that way - thanks for the tip!

[RoadDog]

I would really like to do something like the father and son who discovered the over silver container taken from a monastery that had been buried by Vikings over a thousand years ago.

It was found in the northern part of England by Harrogate and is now on display at the British Museum.

There were over 600 coins and many other objects inside of it. It has been called the biggest find of its type since 1840.

Don't you imagine that must have been one mad Viking when he couldn't find it?

The articles in the container were from Ireland, Russia, France, and Scandinavia, so those Vikings were quite the travelers on that period of time.

From an Associated Press article in the July 20th Chicago Tribune "Viking Treasures Ubearthed".

Now, Let's See, Where Did I Put my Treasure? --RoadDog