Milestone Opposite April Cottage

ST ENODER

1555/0/10029 BLUE ANCHOR 02-AUG-10 Fraddon (Southeast side) Milestone opposite April Cottage

II A milestone, erected in 1830, to a design by William McAdam, and made by Benjamin Bowden. The granite stone is triangular on plan; it is approximately 1m high, has a flat top and carries on its front faces inscribed iron plates with relief lettering, cast by the Perran Foundry Company. The left-hand plate is inscribed TRURO / 12 / FALMOUTH / 22 ½ in serif capitals. The right-hand plate reads BODMIN / 12 ¼ / LONDON 238 in sans serif capitals. The whole milestone is painted white, including the plates, with the lettering picked out in black. The iron plates are held in place with mortar.

HISTORY: Under the Renewal Act of 1828, the Truro Turnpike Trustees proposed a new road from Truck Hill up the northern valley through Probus, Ladock and St Enoder parishes, to Penhale (now Fraddon). The road was designed by William McAdam, then Surveyor for the Trust; he chose a gently winding route up the Tresillian river valley which provided the easiest possible climb. This line would not have been possible until McAdam and his father, John Loudon McAdam, had developed an improved method of drainage which allowed the construction of roads in muddy river valleys. The Truro Turnpike Order Book for 1830 records the commissioning of new milestones along the route from Benjamin Bowden, who was to be paid 13s per triangular stone, later raised by a further 2s. Records from the same year show McAdam's involvement in the design, and also that Perran Foundry was paid £11 2s 0d for producing the cast iron plates with distances in miles, to be affixed to the stones. The order book also records a resolution that the cast-iron distance plates should carry the distance to London. The 1820s and 1830s saw many new roads being built in Cornwall, notably by the Truro and Bodmin Turnpike Trusts. These routes were subject to revisions that resulted in the distances originally shown to Bodmin on the McAdam milestones becoming inaccurate. Ordnance Survey mapping, which shows a change in the distances displayed between the first and second editions (published 1880 and 1907 respectively) suggests that the plates were not corrected until after the Truro Turnpike Trust was wound up in 1874, and the route was taken over by the new County Council. The route remained the main A39 until the 1990s, when a new A39 was provided between Truro and Mitchell, taking over and upgrading an earlier route which the Tresillian Valley road had replaced in the 1830s.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The milestone opposite April Cottage, erected by the Truro Turnpike Trust in 1830, is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons: * Historic interest: the milestone is a good example of an 1830s stone on an historic turnpike road * Intactness: the stone is in its original location, and is intact