Milepost on Drimnin to Dorlin road, at NM 56080 57232

Milepost on Drimnin to Dorlin Road

This is one of seven surviving cast iron mileposts erected in or shortly after 1897 along the Drimnin to Dorlin road. The milepost features a fluted column post that splays towards the base. At the top of the column, on the front face, is an oval makers emblem for the Pioneer Foundry in Blaydon-on-Tyne. The mile marker panels are formed as two oval faces within a larger sub-oval cap, set on top of the post, with place names and distance numbers in relief. The milepost is unpainted.

These mileposts were erected following the completion of the Drimnin to Dorlin road around 1880, which had been built as a Poor Relief Road using funds from the Poor Relief Fund. Poor Relief Roads were constructed in remote areas across the west coast of Scotland to provide employment for people receiving poor relief, who were unable to support themselves through age, incapacity, illness or disability. The road from Drimnin to Dorlin represented an upgrade of an existing routeway rather than a new creation, as tracks between these settlements are shown on Roy's Highland map of 1747–52 and later on Arrowsmith's map of 1807 and the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1872.

The County Council briefly adopted the road in 1897 and may have been responsible for erecting the mileposts. The design is identical to examples found on the Isle of Mull and also appears on the isles of Seil and Luing, in Ardnamurchan, Berwickshire and west Fife, all produced by Pioneer Foundry. Of the original eight mileposts erected along the route, seven survive today.