I’ve settled down to read The Guide Stoops of Derbyshire by Howard Smith. Essentially prior to the establishment of Turnpike Roads travellers and pack ponies travelled by a network of roads and tracks without much in the way of sign posts – making longer journeys something of a dangerous activity – consider Celia Fiennes local guide who became lost in the Peak District at the end of the seventeenth century.

Derbyshire’s administrators – the local JPs- set about improving matters with the extension in the number of guide stones between 1717 and 1734, although the Hope Cross on the Roman road dates from 1737 and is probably a replacement of a medieval way marker. They were responding – somewhat late in the day to an act of Parliament dating from 1709 which required all parishes to set up way markers. The Peak District’s stoop stones catered for the more isolated routes. North Yorkshire’s justices had issued the same demands in 1711 while the West Riding’s guide stoops were expanded in 1700 in response to an earlier act of Parliament dating to 1697. In Yorkshire stoop stones are also known as hand stones – presumably because of the pointing hands that are sometimes carved on them.

However the arrival of turnpike roads changed matters quite considerably in terms of travelling by road and the marking of roads. In 1773 a Turnpike Act made fingerposts obligatory.

And finally, here is my favourite fact of the day – on page 14 of Howard’s work. A 3-ton waggon needed 8 horses to pull it. The same amount carried on the backs of the animals required 30 horses making the waggon a much more economical way of carrying heavy goods.