Milestone Circa 30M South Of No. 2 Eden Cottages

LADOCK

1146/0/10021 B3275 10-MAR-11 New Mills Milestone circa 30m south of No. 2 Ede n Cottages

GV II A milestone of 1830.

EXTERIOR: The stone is triangular in plan with a flat top and chamfered edges. It stands at 0.85m high and is 0.55m wide. There are cast iron plates on either front, road-facing side, set flush with the dressed stone. The left is inscribed TRURO 8 / FALMOUTH 18½', the rightBODMIN 16¼ / LONDON 242'. The type faces of the two plates are different. The stone and the plates are painted white, with the lettering in black. There is a benchmark carved into the top face of the milestone.

HISTORY: In 1754, the first Cornish turnpike was established. The next ten years saw the establishment of several new Turnpike Trusts in the county, resulting in the construction of new roads and the erection of milestones. Under the renewal of the General Turnpike Act in 1828 new roads were commissioned in Cornwall, in order to provide a `modern' road from Falmouth to London, with good gradients and surfaces for horse-drawn traffic. The milestone in New Mills is one of a series of twelve, eleven of which are extant, beginning in Truro and heading north-east to Fraddon. The Truro Turnpike Order Book records that these milestones were produced by a Benjamin Bowden in 1830; the cast-iron plates were cast by Perran Foundry.

In 1835 a new route was constructed which avoided a steep hill, and hence nullified some of the distances on the stones. There are uniform discrepancies in distance on this, and the other milestones in the series on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1880. The second edition of 1907 shows the correct distances, suggesting the milestones were given new mileage plates sometime between these dates, probably in 1889 when the County Council took on the maintenance of the road.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The milestone on the B3275, 30m south of No. 2 Eden Cottages in New Mills is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons: * Intactness: it is an intact milestone dating from 1830, which remains in its original position * Historic Interest: it testifies to the great wave of C18 road improvement * Group value: it forms a group with the other ten surviving milestones along the road between Truro and Fraddon