Another talk coming up

I'll be reprising some details of the walk at this year's Milestone Society conference: details here. 

https://www.milestonesociety.co.uk/events-and-activities/

Thomas Telford's Milestones

I have been so busy telling various interested parties about this that I have forgotten to mention it here until now. At long last my article on the Telford milestones, a spin-off from this walk, has appeared in print.

It was not something I had set out to do when I began the walk, but my interest in the subject deepened as I went on, especially once I realised that Telford intended the Anglesey limestone, and the same design, to be used all the way. I really had to get to the bottom of whether he managed to achieve that. This meant one or two return visits, mostly to bits of Telford's road that weren't Watling Street, the road I had originally decided I wasn't going to follow.

A few positive outcomes from the research (so far) are two milestones newly listed by Historic England, their descriptions of other listed milestones improved, and the Trunk Road Agency in Wales starting to repair some damage. Also, three original milestone plates which somebody, sometime must have pinched from the actual milestones turned up at an auction and, thanks to some quick action involving myself, the Milestone Society and the Trunk Road Agency, were recovered back into the possession of the highway authority. There is still hope that they could be reinstated. The picture shows me with them, on a loan from the highway authority when I was giving a talk about my walk.

No more spoliers here. I can't reproduce it all here - but readers may join the Milestone Society for only £12.50 to get a copy!

More Detailed Research on the Telford Milestones

Just as hunting for milestones became a bit of a distraction from other activities on the walk itself, so completing the follow-up research on them has also taken me away from writing up the whole of the walk. However, I feel I have now reached, ahem, a milestone, with the research.

I've got to the point of being able to say something definitive about the original milestones from Thomas Telford's time, not just between Holyhead and Shrewsbury, but also a few in Southeast England and in Ireland. It was nice realising that the contemporary documentary sources allow them to be dated almost to the year: 1825-26 on Anglesey, 1826-27 the rest of the way to Shrewsbury, more specific than any modern lists. They are all Carboniferous Limestone from Red Wharf Bay, the same stone as the Menai Bridge: including, even, two milestones in St Albans. I'm confident enough now to start making representations to the various authorities to amend or update their records. I won't go into it all here: there's an article about it in the pipeline!

Telford's Depots

When Thomas Telford built the Holyhead road he arranged that there were 'depots' along the way. These were alcoves in the side wall to store graded broken stones - all there, so that a man with just a shovel and a wheelbarrow could patch up any potholes quickly. These were built every few hundred yards, more of them where road conditions meant more wear and tear. I reckon there could have been about 800 depots originally between Chirk and Holyhead.




How many still survive? I tried to make a note, and take a
photograph, of all that I saw along the way. I counted up each day and the total of those reported here was 270. Now, I have gone back through the notes and photos in more detail and found I had more. On the first count there were 308 but that included a number of 'possibles'. 'Possible' either because there was so much overgrown vegetation that I really couldn't see the depot shape in the wall, or because it seemed the wrong size. I have reviewed these again, mainly by reference to whether I could find a depot marked at that point on the early (usually 1880s) large scale OS maps. This review led to revising my number of depots to exactly 300.



This compares with 333 found in the Quartermaine, Trinder and Turner survey in 1999. Why the difference? I was conscious that these weren't always that obvious, especially when overgrown, and fairly strict that I had to see traces of the back wall to be sure (or, as above, could find the depot on an old map), and it's entirely possible that I missed a few. Quartermaine et al may have counted some which I ruled out, and it would have been easier for them to find depots in a few stretches of road that have been closed off since their survey and the old road has all been overgrown, such as at Dinmael. It is of course entirely possible that some depots have just disappeared in the meantime, in the course of works by adjoining landowners or the highway authorities. However, it is fair to say that these depots are now, by and large, respected and preserved. At least 22 of them have been entirely rebuilt with modern walls (I've still counted these, on a Trigger's Broom axiom). The depots have survived better in the countryside because properties built up along the road in the urban areas have inevitably created new roadsides. It's actually quite amazing that as many as 300 survive when these are 200 years old; they now form one of the distinctive features of the A5 across North Wales.


What do they do now? I counted 34 which house road signs. There are 12 telephone poles, 4 bus stops and various other bits and pieces of street furniture. Betws-y-Coed makes very good use of them for benches and pot plants.  None is used for its original purpose, except perhaps temporarily.

Many are well preserved, especially through Snowdonia and on Anglesey. My pictures above are just a few of the better ones.

Others are tumbling down, overgrown, or both. In the interest of balance, I include below a few pictures of these, too.

Some Thoughts on the North Wales milestones

So at last I have gone through all my pictures, filled in a few gaps, and put up all the North Wales milestones on the blog. The great thing is that there are so many of them on this leg of the route - not quite one per mile, but very nearly.

This is partly because, after the Quatermaine book, and the Welsh Government deciding they wanted to preserve the historic road, steps were taken to replace missing stones with new ones. In total, there should be 83 milestones, of which 79 of the original limestones are still standing (not necessarily in their original location - that's a further complication which I may address later). Of these, 42 have the original cast-iron plates with the mileage to Holyhead and the next coaching stop either way. The rest have reproduction plates, cast as closely as possible to the originals but additionally with '2003' shown in smaller letter, so we know they're later. A further three milestones have reproduction plates in reproduction stone, where the original stone had been lost or was irretrievably broken.

This leaves just one location - 2 miles to Holyhead - where there is no milestone at all. This might be because the original milestone would have been under what later became the Anglesey Aluminium works, and the road was diverted round it, although I find that a poor excuse not to have replaced it when all the others were done.

In relation to what is officially classed a listed building or structure, the general rule adopted seems to be that only those with the original plates should be protected in this way. This seems a reasonable enough criterion, except that I found that they haven't always followed the rule - some with an original plate are not listed, and some with a reproduction plate are listed - and no obvious justification for that. I will take it up with Cadw.

Considering it was nearly twenty years ago when these milestones were addressed and replacements made, I wanted to see how well they've lasted, and whether the effort put to their conservation can still be seen. There is some variation in their condition and accessibility, as my pictures show. A good number are in very good condition and stand proud by the roadside so that even the casual passer-by would have little doubt what they are. The best stand in front of an arch built into the side wall of the road, probably preserving in this a feature of the original wall.

Some were obscured by vegetation and were as a result hard to find. Sometimes I managed to pull away the ivy or whatever it was before taking a picture, but it wasn't always safe to do so, so they have remained as they were. Some are just dirty (and some of the blurrier pictures of mine were just taken in the rain).

There's a lot of variation in how the paint has lasted, with a lot of rust showing through even in some of the new replacement plates. I often found myself thinking, wouldn't it be nice if local people got together to look after their milestone and ensure it could be seen (subject of course to safety on the road). This has indeed happened, in the case of the paint, for at least two milestones, at 8 and 83 miles to Holyhead:

However, I found myself a little ambivalent about this development, for although in each case the milestone is better looked after, they've changed the painting scheme. At 83 miles, it's black letters on a white background when all the others in Wales are white letters on a black background (Telford's original painting scheme, for better visibility in snow, according to Bob Daimond). Granted this is the first one in Wales and therefore the same scheme as 84 miles, the next one along over the border in England. The 8-mile changes are more subtle: painting the bolts white and painting the bevel of the stone, in addition to the plate, black. It looks nice, but it's not the same as the others; again I'm worrying about authenticity.

Finally, this milestone is not in a particularly good condition, and is one with a reproduction plate, but it stands on a length of the old road which is now just a footpath - in this case just south of the A55 and north of Lon Isaf Tollgate. This means it can be readily accessed, so I could cut away the vegetation at leisure,  and more to the point the authorities have raised it so that it now stands at something like the original height of the milestones above the roadway - in other cases, successive layers of tarmac have built the road up the front of the stone. Here alone you get the idea what it looked like when first placed.

North Wales A5 Milestones pictured

Pont Rhyd Goch and authenticity

For once I had been able to get off the road and take a picture with a good view of a bridge. This is Pont Rhyd Goch, very close to the summit of the entire road. Isn't this a lovely bridge and a classic example of a Thomas Telford bridge? Well, yes and no.

The design you see is Telford, but look carefully under the arch and you can see where the carriageway has been widened with a modern reinforced concrete arch. After that, the outer wall was replaced just as it was, a bit further out, by skilled conservators. So we are seeing what it was supposed to look like, but put back later.  As the purpose of the walk was to seek out the visible signs of the road's history, this, and other artefacts along the way,  poses the question of authenticity. Am I really seeing the history I had set out to see, or is it a pastiche?

The historical legacy of the road is very much respected by the fact that the conservators have needed to do their work. I've seen features along the way, such as depots, which are still there, not because they perform a useful function (although some do, incidentally) but because the highway authorities have chosen to keep them as a reminder of the forebears' work. Nowadays, legislation protects many historic buildings and structures, but they're only still there because landowners and public authorities chose to protect them before there was legislation. At the end of the day, I see and enjoy things that have been deliberately preserved and conserved over the years, when the originals that have not been so well looked-after are tumbled down or overgrown. I conclude (concede?) that the nice looking bits of history are not quite authentically as built.    

At Pont Rhyd Goch, I can't even be sure about the name. New bridges don't seem to have been officially named, but just acquired the names that local people gave them, usually describing what they were near - the river or a nearby building - or, occasionally, what they replaced.  So a name Pont Rhyd Goch (Red Ford Bridge) is typical, suggesting that the bridge was close to, or replaced, a ford where maybe rocks were reddish. The difficulty is that Telford's route for the road here was brand new, the older road, still very clear today as a track and public path, being just across the valley. Having regard to few buildings and tracks in this remote terrain, there just isn't anywhere that would need a ford from the old road across the river at this point: it just wouldn't go anywhere. On a map from 1889, the earliest I have found where the bridge is named, it's called Pont Ty Coch, which may be more original, named after a roadside building, and later adapted to the present name.