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This month we are revisiting the subject of the very first ‘Odd Socs’ column (CA 211): the Milestone Society. The original idea for ‘Odd Socs’ was to adopt a tongue-in-cheek approach to the heritage sector’s hundreds of voluntary societies, presenting them as quirky examples of British eccentricity, while revealing the true value of the work undertaken by people with apparently obsessive passions. We later discovered that the Milestone Society (MS) was far from happy at being teased in this way, so to make amends we are revisiting the Society to mark this 200th column – a milestone, one might say, in the history of CA.
When first profiled in September 2007, the MS was nearing the completion of a comprehensive database of some 31,000 surviving milestones, fingerposts, boundary markers, wayside crosses, AA signs, and tollhouses in Britain and Ireland. The locations are displayed on the Society’s website using Google Earth mapping, along with a vast quantity of images and articles.
Since then, the emphasis in the Society’s work has shifted to physical conservation and encouraging people to cherish their local milestones. Members have restored hundreds of examples across the country, given talks to thousands of people, led heritage walks, participated in Heritage Open Days and Festivals of Archaeology, and been featured in articles in the national and local press, as well as on radio and TV. They have sponsored a national poetry competition and instituted an award for ‘an outstanding contribution to preserving and promoting the milestones and other roadside heritage features of the British Isles’.
Rising to the challenge of engaging young people in its activities, the MS presented the first-such award to pupils from St John’s Primary School in Cliviger, Lancashire, who designed a new milestone to mark the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the coronation of King Charles III. Carved by Morecombe-based sculptor Shane Johnstone and placed outside the school, it shows the distances from the village to Turf Moor (home of Burnley Football Club) and to the moon. Matching the shape and dimensions of local historic examples, it is probably the first milestone to be installed in Lancashire for two centuries.
Further information: http://www.milestonesociety.co.uk
Is there a society that you would like to see profiled? Write to theeditor@archaeology.co.uk
Images: August Schwerdfeger, CC BY-SA 4.0; Milestone Society
