Rounceval Street from Old Passage
Mile 7

To
Chipping Sodbury
8

National Grid Reference: 363525, 186300

Location: Old Church Road, Rudgeway, directly opposite the entrance to South View Farm.

Date recorded: Sunday, 19 August 2012

Type of milestone: Iron Plate on Stone

Notes: This milestone – along with its smaller partner, which is most probably a Boundary Stone – is across a ditch from the roadside verge, so the first time I photographed it on Saturday, 29th September 2007 I was unable to get close enough to move the vegetation and read the inscription properly. So imagine my surprise when, returning nearly five years later when the brambles had been cleared (and annoyingly replaced with nettles that all but obscured the benchmark symbol), I found it thinks it's actually EIGHT miles from its destination!

Geography and the 1881 Ordnance Survey map confirm the correct distance as seven miles, and on closer inspection it looks as if its plate may have been either amended (there's a suspicious '7'-shaped crack beneath the '8', and the rusty fixing screws appear rather too modern and randomly positioned) or replaced. I'm yet to find any similar examples of this sort of plate that might provide some clues.

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