THE LAST milepost has been installed on the former Stratford to Long Compton highway.
The seventh and final post was discovered in a private garden in Kenilworth and has now been restored to its rightful place on a section of the A3400 at Honington.
The Restoring Warwickshire Waymarkers Project launched in 2011 when county members of The Milestone Society discovered a milepost thought to have been lost, buried in a tall roadside hedge near Little Wolford.
A plan was hatched to extract it and restore it along with five other waymarkers known to the group – three damaged but in situ along the highway and two others which had been found.
The six waymarkers were all restored to their rightful places, pointing the way for travellers, but in the meantime news of a seventh waymarker reached the group.
It was found in a Kenilworth garden and was given to the Milestone Society in 2019 for restoration and return to the highway. After various delays, including the pandemic, it reached its historically correct site last Thursday (June 29).
One of the other mileposts – now back in its correct position by the entrance to Alderminster village, spent time in the Shipston Museum after being rescued from a skip by the late Mike Ashley, joint museum curator.
Before he passed away Mike requested that The Milestone Society should use its best endeavours to restore the post and put it back in its rightful place.
The restoration and reinstatement work, funded by the National Lottery, Alderminster Parish Council and The Milestone Society – and supported by Warwickshire County Highways – was carried out by Fisher Landscapes.
The mileposts date from 1901 and were manufactured for the county of Worcester when Alderminster was in Worcestershire prior to boundary changes later in the 20th century.
