Milestone Immediately in Front of NO.7 Grove Cottages

Reasons for Designation

Yes List

Details

LADOCK

1146/0/10020 B3275 14-FEB-11 Milestone immediately in front of No.7 Grove Cottages

II DESCRIPTION: milestone, erected in 1830, to designs by William McAdam, and made by Benjamin Bowden. The stone is triangular on plan; it stands 0.9m high, has a flat top and carries inscribed iron plates cast by the Perran Foundry Company on its front faces. The north plate is inscribed TRURO / 7 / FALMOUTH / 17½ in Roman capitals whilst the south plate reads BODMIN / 17¼ / LONDON / 243 in sans serif capitals. The whole milestone is painted white, including the plates, with the lettering picked out in black.

HISTORY: Under the renewal of the General Turnpike Act in 1828 the Truro Turnpike Trustees proposed a new road that was to run north-east from Truck Hill, through the parishes of Probus, Ladock and St Enoder to Penhale. It was engineered by William McAdam, Surveyor for the Trust, as part of a scheme to create a 'modern', well-graded road from Falmouth to London. As such, McAdam chose a gentle, winding route through the Tresillian river valley to give the easiest possible climb; this course would not have been possible until McAdam and his father, John Loudon McAdam, had developed an improved method of drainage which allowed for the construction of roads in muddy river valleys. The Truro Turnpike Order Book for 1830 records that twelve triangular milestones were commissioned from Benjamin Bowden, initially for the sum of 13s per stone but later raised to 15s. It was also recorded that the stones should display the distance to London and that the Perran Foundry Company was paid £11 2s 0d for producing the cast iron plates. However, the distances to London as displayed on the plates were nullified in 1835 when the Bodmin Turnpike Trust constructed a new road to avoid the long steep climb from Lamorick. Although a shallow gradient was provided, it increased the distance between Bodmin and Truro. There are uniform discrepancies in distance on this, and the other milestones in the series on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 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.

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 that the Tresillian Valley road had replaced in the 1830s.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The milestone on the east side of the B3275, immediately in front of No.7 Grove Cottages, erected by the Truro Turnpike Trust in 1830, 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 * Design: it is part of the only series of milestones in Cornwall that indicate the distance to London * Group Value: it has group value with the other ten surviving milestones along the road between Truro and Fraddon * Historical Association: its location on an historic turnpike is a testament to the development of the road network in Cornwall, particularly to facilitate transportation to and from London

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

508986

Legacy System:

LBS

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