Milestone 1 Mile

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

The current milestone is one of an original set of 17 milestones that marked intervals of one Irish mile from Enniskillen to the border of Fermanagh along the mail coach road, which extended through Cavan to Dublin. Erected between c1810 and c1835, 12 of the series survive, of which two have been relocated and one is already listed.
The milestones in the set are carved from local limestone and are square in plan, rising just over 1m. The milestones vary slightly in design, the individual, uneven vernacular quality suggesting the work of local craftsmen. Generally, they gently taper to form an elongated prism; in some, this is less pronounced. While the front and rear elevations are flush, the side elevations are more often profiled, stepping out at a low level to define a base and overhanging at the top with a roll that tapers upward to a crown profile, completing an ornate terminus.
This 'One-Mile-Stone' is situated at one Irish mile from Enniskillen and would likely also have originally shown the distances to Dublin (79.5 miles) and Cavan (24.5 miles).
The stone has been severely damaged, removing all distance detail and much of the upper fabric; however, the matching limestone and surviving proportions suggest that it would have once resembled other remaining milestones in the sequence.

HB references for the collection of 12 Milestones along the former coach road to Dublin from Enniskillen

1 mile HB12/17/085
Nr 11 LOUGH YOAN ROAD, ENNISKILLEN, BT74 4GR

3 mile HB12/07/056
Nr 4 GOLA ROAD, TAMLAGHT, ENNISKILLEN, BT74 4AF

5 mile HB12/07/057
Nr 147 FARNAMULLAN ROAD, LISBELLAW, BT94 5EA

8 mil e HB12/05/056 (Record Only)
Nr 338 GOLA ROAD, LISNASKEA, BT92 0FE

9 mile HB12/03/059
Nr BEECH HOUSE, 52 MAIN STREET, LISNASKEA, BT92 0JD

10 mile HB12/03/040
KILLYCRUTTEN, CO.FERMANAGH
H3693 3238

11 mile HB12/03/060
Nr 87 CROM ROAD, LISNASKEA, BT92 0BZ

13 mile HB12/02/123
Nr 214 CROM ROAD, NEWTOWNBUTLER, BT92 8BE

14 mile HB12/02/124
Nr 252 CROM ROAD, NEWTOWNBUTLER, BT92 8GD

15 mile HB12/02/125 (Record Only)
Nr 300 CROM ROAD, NEWTOWNBUTLER, BT92 8JL

16 mile HB12/02/126
Nr 349 CROM ROAD, NEWTOWNBUTLER, BT92 8GH

17 mile HB12/02/127
Nr 193 WATTLEBRIDGE ROAD, NEWTOWNBUTLER, BT92 8EG

Historical information

The current milestone is one of a series of 12 erected between c1810 and c1835. These are survivors from an original set of 17 milestones that marked intervals of one Irish mile from Enniskillen to the border of Fermanagh along the mail coach road that extended through Cavan to Dublin. The section of road where the stones are located, between Enniskillen and Wattlebridge, was largely constructed between 1808 and 1822 for the purpose of providing a broad, flat road for the use of mail coaches. The road was used by the mail coach service (with some re-routing) until 1859 and the coming of the railways.

The current milestone is situated at a distance of one mile from Enniskillen and would likely also have originally shown the distances to Dublin (79.5 miles) and Cavan (24.5 miles). Although the stone has been severely damaged removing all distance detail and much of the fabric, the surviving proportions suggest that it would have once resembled other remaining milestones in the sequence. (An alternative possibility is that this stone pre-dates the others as it lies on a section of the old road to Dublin.) Between 1857 and 1905, most likely as part of the 1905 ordnance survey of this part of Fermanagh, a ‘crow’s foot’ cut benchmark was carved into the milestone (also now gone). The benchmark is indicated on the 3rd edition OS map, recording a height of 173.7 feet above sea level.

Although milestones themselves are generally difficult to date, some of the roads established as part of the mail coach system are well documented and this has allowed the possible range of dates to be narrowed down. Enniskillen was noted to be a post town as early as 1659, but its status was further formalised when a Post Office for Ireland, separate from that in Britain, was established by an Act of 1784 (Hughes). Enniskillen’s regular organised postal service connected the town with both Dublin and Belfast, and through these hubs with other towns in Ireland, and with Britain. The mail to Enniskillen was generally carried from Dublin by a mounted postboy in the later 18th century. However, postboys and the other commonly used mode of transport, mail carts, proved slow and vulnerable to attack and were gradually replaced by a mail coach system, shortly after such a system was established in Britain.

The first mail coaches in Ireland were introduced on the Dublin to Cork and Dublin to Belfast roads in 1789 and from 1803 a regular mail coach service began to run between Dublin and Enniskillen (a previous attempt to run a mail coach to Enniskillen had faltered during the 1798 rebellion) (Hughes). Notwithstanding the separate status of the postal service in Ireland, the coaches, drivers and guards had recognisably similar livery, equipment and operating practices to mail coaches in Britain, creating a unified system. The Dublin to Enniskillen mail coach, painted in black, maroon and gold livery, is known to have taken part in ceremonial occasions, particularly royal birthdays. At the birthday of George IV in April 1822, the Enniskillen mail coach paraded with other mail coaches through Dublin. The ‘rich scarlet coats, light vests and swell [stylish or elegant] cravats’ of the drivers were noted and so too was the royal livery of the guards, and the chronometers they carried on their chests to keep time.

When first established the Dublin to Enniskillen mail coach travelled via Newtownbutler, Maguiresbridge and Lisbellaw, along a road which was most likely present from at least the early plantation period (if not before, Lisnaskea and Enniskillen being strongholds of the Maguires) and is shown on Herman Moll’s new map of Ireland of 1695. The four-horse mail coach left Dawson Street in Dublin at half past ten at night and arrived in Enniskillen the following evening at eight o’clock, a journey time of 21½ hours (Saunders Newsletter). Mounted postboys waited at Maguiresbridge and Enniskillen to take mail along routes not served by mail coaches (Larkin map1805). On its return journey, the coach left the Mail Coach Hotel in Enniskillen at 8 am and arrived in Dublin at 6 am the following day. Despite their slow pace by modern standards, the mail coaches were generally effective in guaranteeing the safe and relatively speedy passage of mail, which was seen as particularly important for trade purposes (notwithstanding two reported instances where the Enniskillen coach was held up and robbed in 1814 and 1816).

However, the condition of many of the roads used by the coaches quickly became a concern. An average speed of 3½ Irish miles per hour was stipulated by statute for the mail coach roads but this was often impossible to maintain. Two pieces of related legislation (the Highways (Ireland) Acts 1805 and1806), were passed in the early years of the 19th century with the aim of having all Irish post roads surveyed, planning new roads and bringing forward improvement schemes to increase road width (to 42 ft) and decrease gradient (to less than 1 in 35). Surveys throughout Ireland were carried out by Major Alexander Taylor and a team of engineers between 1805 and 1816. Due to resistance from County Grand Juries, only a small proportion of Taylor’s recommendations were carried out, but the construction of new sections of road on the route from Cavan to Enniskillen (effectively the sections of road now called Gola and Crom Roads) was one of the proposals made by Taylor that was adopted and acted upon. A survey of the old road and the route proposed for the new road is to be found among the 14 volumes of manuscript maps produced by Alexander Taylor and his team and held by the National Library of Ireland.

The Irish Treasury advanced a total sum of £30,492.19s.4d to the Grand Jury of Fermanagh between 1810 and 1816 for the new road from Cavan to Enniskillen, which consisted of a stretch between Tallaght and Lisnaskea (now known as the Gola Road) and a further stretch between Lisnaskea and Clonnaroo townland (now known as the Crom Road). The road was a presentment road (rather than a turnpike on which a toll was paid – only the Dublin to Navan stretch of the Enniskillen to Dublin route was a turnpike) and the cost was returned to the Treasury from money raised through local taxation (county cess). The road was then maintained by the county and the baronies through which it passed, which granted 5- or 7-year contracts to keep the road in repair.

The grand jury presentment books for Fermanagh, although incomplete, contain several
references to the construction of the ‘new line of mail coach road from Enniskillen to Cavan’. Between1808 and 1818 individuals are named, including several local landlords such as Lord Belmont, Rev William Moffitt, and Henry Brooke who were paid to construct various stretches of the new road using stone and gravel, to build bridges and to put up fences on each side. Other names that frequently occur in connection with the construction of this road are George and Henry Leslie and Richard Davies. The route of the mail coach can be traced through the ‘Treble Almanack’, an annual publication which lists the mail coaches from Dublin and the routes taken. The almanacks suggest that the upper part of the route (Gola Road) had been completed by 1817 and the lower part (Crom Road) by 1823. The completed road is shown on the first edition OS map of 1834.

The new road was certainly complete by 1822 when a government report found that the last 17 miles of the road from Dublin to Enniskillen was then ‘in tolerable good order’ being newly built. The new road was known locally as ‘the Broad Road’, as most presentment roads in Fermanagh were little more than 20 feet wide at this time (McNeill, Trimble, OS Memoirs). OS Memoirs of 1834-5 praise the new road, especially where it passes through the parish of Aghalurcher (Gola Road) as ‘perhaps a specimen of road making not to be surpassed anywhere, its average breadth is 46 feet from fence to fence and is judicially laid throughout. The materials are broken limestone…which makes a sound durable road’. The road was narrower where it passed through Galloon parish (Crom Road), only 32 feet, a fact which had been criticised by government inspectors shortly after it was built. The road widened again to 45 feet through Drummully parish (this short section of new road was added later, in 1829). However, in Enniskillen parish there was a stretch of the road which was often below the winter level of Upper Lough Erne and has ‘almost every season been overflown by it for a considerable time’ (OS Memoirs).

The mail coach to Dublin was the first to be established from Enniskillen and was followed by additional mail coaches along other routes (to Ballyshannon and to Belfast) in the 1820s and 30s. The mail coach to Belfast, shared the road from Enniskillen to Dublin for 4½ miles by 1834-5 (probably until it turned along a new road to Maguiresbridge that had been constructed in 1833) and it appears unlikely therefore, that the current milestones would have been put up after this date (McNeill, OS Memoirs). Any new milestone at the head of the road would probably have included the distance to Belfast.

Unfortunately, the surviving grand jury presentment books do not give any information about the putting up of milestones along the current road, either during construction or shortly after its completion. These records do show that responsibility for milestones on presentment roads in Fermanagh was often assumed by the grand juries. However, the spacing of mile markers at regular intervals would have been of primary importance to the mail coaches, whose guards used chronometers to keep the mail coaches to time. Mile markers also gave a reliable indicator of the distance between towns, which was important for the calculation of postal charges. Prior to the introduction of an affordable flat rate penny post in 1840, postage was calculated according to distance, and the cost of sending a letter from Dublin to Enniskillen was 9d, prohibitively expensive for most ordinary people.

Mile markers were also used by the general traveller to navigate the road system, both for direction-finding and to know the distance to the next town. Edward Wakefield, a traveller in Ireland whose observations were published in 1812, noted that in Fermanagh ‘conspicuous direction posts are everywhere seen, and contribute by their friendly assistance to prevent strangers from going out of their way’. The direction posts he remarked upon were made of wood (he was informed that they would have been burned for fuel had they been erected in other counties). Although direction posts are not necessarily the same type of marker as a milestone, this observation does raise the possibility that wooden markers could have been used along the present road, prior to the putting up of milestones.

Another travel guide to Ireland, published in 1815, makes use of the milestones along the old route from Cavan to Enniskillen to mark out sights that the traveller might enjoy. It is clear that there was a set of milestones along the old route to Dublin at this time that predated the current milestones (these are also shown on Taylor and Skinner’s map of the area in 1777). There are points where the old and new routes intersect and the milestones would have clashed, perhaps leading to the removal of the old stones at these points after 1815. For example, Lisnaskea is said to be 70¼ miles from Dublin. The position of the current milestone in Lisnaskea places it 71½ miles from Dublin (although the milestone at Lisnaskea is unfortunately now illegible) (The Traveller’s New Guide Through Ireland).

The milestones are all located on the left-hand side of the road to Dublin, many of them being located well back from the carriageway on wide verges that emphasise the width of the road. The stones give distances to Dublin at the top of the stone, to Cavan in the centre (including fractions of a mile) and from Enniskillen in whole miles, at the bottom of the stone. It was customary for coaches and riders to travel on the left even before the advent of motorised transport, but as the stones bear distances to Enniskillen, Cavan and Dublin and are positioned sideways on to the road (similarly to stones on the Dublin to Navan stretch of the route), it is clear they were intended to be read from both directions (Murphy).

The milestones use Irish miles, which were phased out after the passing of the Weights and Measures Act 1824 and were most likely put in place before this date. However, a caveat must be given as the Irish Post Office continued to use the Irish mile (in stamp cancellations and published lists of distances) until at least the 1850s and although the milestones could have been erected by the county, it is probable that they would have followed the lead of the Post Office. Even as late as 1901, new fingerposts erected by Fermanagh County Council were ordered (after some argument) to display Irish miles, to keep them consistent with already existing milestones in the county. A local MP, Jeremiah Jordan, asserted in 1904, ‘We have no statute miles in Fermanagh’. Following the change to the shorter statute mile, milestones in some parts of Ireland were moved closer together. However, this would not have been possible in the current instance, as the stones measure distances in both directions.

The milestones are made of limestone, a type of stone which was quarried locally, notably in Lisnaskea, for building purposes. OS Memoirs recount that the local limestone was ‘compact and hard and rarely burnt for lime’. The milestones are relatively tall and when they were made, consideration may have been given to their visibility during flooding episodes. In the winter of 1821 newspapers reported that flooding was in places two feet deep on the mail coach road. In fact, during winter floods the mail coach was sometimes compelled to use the old road through Maguiresbridge instead of the post road.

The locations of the milestones are likely to have been measured from the Market House/Town Hall in The Diamond at Enniskillen. Although some secondary sources claim that milestones in Enniskillen were measured from the post office, Trimble’s history of Enniskillen situates the early 19th century post office, and Mr Hall’s stables, (provider of fresh horses for the mail coach) close to the RC chapel in Church Street, which lies too far distant from the first milestone and cannot have been the start point used. After ‘about 1830’ the mail coaches stopped at Mr Liddle Baxter’s of the Diamond and the guards and drivers lodged on the other side of the street at Mrs Brady’s hotel, from which time the starting point of the mail coach would have matched the distance recorded by the milestones (Trimble).

Intriguingly, a Mr James Hall, owner of extensive premises in Enniskillen and perhaps the same Mr Hall that supplied mail coach horses, left among his possessions on his death in 1824, a ‘perambulator in good order, for measuring roads’ (Enniskillen Chronicle). Although there is no known connection between Mr Hall and the milestones, it is probable that something of this kind was used for measuring distances between them, i.e. a wheel that clicked when it completed a revolution, pushed or pulled using a handle.

The new road was built in order to avoid the hills and settlements along the old Dublin road which ran via Newtownbutler and thereby to save time on the journey, (although as we have seen, by doing so a new risk was introduced relating to winter flooding). OS Memoirs comments in 1834-5 that the old road through Newtownbutler and Donagh was ‘so hilly it is only used by the inhabitants as a means of communication’. In 1825, following construction of the new road, the time taken for the Enniskillen mail coach to reach Enniskillen had dropped to 16¼ hours, although other improvements no doubt contributed to this. By 1834, following further improvements in roads, coaches and timekeeping, the journey time had decreased to 12 hours.

However, pressure eventually began to build to re-route the mail coach road, so that it would take in the town of Newtownbutler, where there was frustration at having to wait for the Dublin mail to arrive from Lisnaskea. At the Spring Assizes in 1842, the Grand Jury of Fermanagh agreed to present funds towards the building of a new stretch of road from Newtownbutler to Wattlebridge along which it was expected the mail coach would be re-routed. This new road is shown on the 2nd edition OS map of 1857 although it is unclear if it was completed in time to allow the mail coach to bypass the Crom Road before the advent of the railway.
One or two coaching inns were required within Fermanagh for the new road, because horses normally had to be changed about every 8 to 12 Irish miles. The ‘Treble Almanack’ suggests that stops were made at Wattlebridge and Lisnaskea and newspaper reports confirm that in 1840, the inn used by the mail coach was in Lisnaskea (near the 9th milestone), while OS Memoirs record that horses were changed at Wattlebridge (at the 17th milestone). However, there are two further possible locations for former coaching inns. In Clevaghy townland opposite the 11th milestone a coaching inn, present by 1825 (but according to OS Memoirs never used as an inn), was constructed by Colonel Madden of Hilton Park House in County Monaghan. The Madden family had also owned the nearby demesne of Manor Waterhouse from 1638 and had built a substantial dwelling house on the site of an earlier bawn, the empty house being pulled down by Madden for stone to build the coaching inn. According to Trimble the stone may also have been used to build the road itself, and it is conceivable that some may have been used for milestones. Colonel Madden is named in the presentment books as undertaking subsidiary works on the road, particularly on drains and bridges. The former coaching inn was listed in 1980 (HB12/03/045) and remains intact with a substantial rear courtyard surrounded by double height outbuildings. W A McCutcheon places another coaching inn in neighbouring Sallaghy townland, giving the grid ref H381293. However, no remains of other coaching inns are known to have survived.

With the coming of the railway age and after the opening of the Dublin and Drogheda Railway in 1844, mail for Enniskillen began to be sent from Dublin to Drogheda by train where it was collected by a mail coach and delivered to Enniskillen. However, the train and mail coach route via Drogheda did not prove a success and by 1849 a direct mail coach from Enniskillen to Dublin was once again in operation. This service finally ended in 1855 when the Dundalk and Enniskillen railway reached Newbliss, mail being carried onwards to Enniskillen by a combination of the Derry and Belfast mail coaches, which travelled via Monaghan. The railway reached Enniskillen in 1859 bringing to an end the mail coach era, as far as it relates to the Dublin to Enniskillen route, and to the use of the current road as a mail coach road.

The current set of milestones are somewhat unusual relative to other known milestones in the north of Ireland. Milestone shapes vary from square profile to prism to the ‘tombstone’ type with a single face seen here. However, the curved shaping at the top of the stones is more decorative than is usual and no examples featuring this exact shaping have so far been located elsewhere in Britain or Ireland. It is of interest that several milestones in Ireland of a later date which bear the initials PO or GPO (often on an inserted metal plate), and which can be assumed to have been erected by the Post Office, are also shaped so that they rise to a point at the top. Although the current milestones do not carry any lettering to link them to the Post Office, the stylistic flourish of the curved design is possibly an attempt to live up to the prestige of the mail coach system, otherwise expressed through its liveried accoutrements. The milestones nonetheless have an individual, uneven vernacular quality and illustrate the workmanship of local craftsmen.

It is believed that milestones were often painted in the past to make them more prominent, usually with limewash and with lettering picked out in black, but it is unclear whether the current set of milestones were painted in this way. The 10 mile stone currently has painted lettering and the remaining lettering on the 11 mile stone is also painted. Lettering is not in a perfect state of preservation on all the stones, and in some cases has disappeared entirely. The milestone at Lisnaskea has no visible lettering on the surface facing towards the street, and it is possible that the stone has at some point been turned round.

Stones may on occasion have been deliberately defaced and it was recorded in 1972 that the 10-mile marker at Killycrutten (HB12/03/040) had been rescued and buried by a nearby householder when it was about to be destroyed by ‘rebels’ in the 1920s. The stone was restored to its original position some time later. It is also believed that milestones were sometimes defaced during WW2 as a defensive strategy in case of German invasion. However, some of the damage to the stones may be accounted for as natural weathering due to age.

Following the coming of the railways and the end of the mail coach system, the upper part of the current road (known as Gola Road) continued to be the main highway from Enniskillen to Dublin for over a century more. With the arrival of the age of motorised transport the road was designated Class I in 1923 and was numbered as part of the A34. When the railways stopped operating in 1957, the road’s significance gradually increased once again to the point where it eventually became inadequate to deal with the rising levels of traffic. In the 1970s, the A34 was rerouted via Maguiresbridge and Gola Road was consequently reduced to a B road (B514). The lower section of the current road (Crom Road) which had been bypassed when the mail coach road was re-routed via Newtownbutler in the mid-19th century, is today designated a classified minor road (C430). Survival of the milestones is better on the Crom Road, which perhaps managed to escape road improvements to a greater degree than the Gola Road.
Although the former mail coach road continues to follow its original route and the widths of the road today appear broadly consistent with those noted in the 19th century (except near Enniskillen where the road has been widened and slightly rerouted), no other remnants of the coach road era are evident in signposting or fabric, other than a milestone at Drumcru crossroads (Crom Road). This milestone is entirely different in character to the rest of the sequence but was most likely erected at around the same time, in order to direct visitors to the Crom estate. The milestone was listed in 2005 (HB12/02/118).

The current set of milestones, as individual stones, are one of the few remaining reminders of the days of coach travel and the mail coach system in Fermanagh. The historical context in which they were put up adds to our understanding of the significant improvements to the road system made during the 19th century. Their significance is increased by their survival as a series with relatively few losses on this stretch of the former mail coach road to Dublin.

References:
Primary Sources:
1. PRONI OS/6/4/22,27,28,34,39,40,43/1 First Edition Six Inch OS map (1834)
2. PRONI OS/6/4/22,27,28,34,39,40,43/2 Second Edition Six Inch OS map (1857)
3. PRONI OS/6/4/22,27,28,34,39,40,43/3 Third Edition Six Inch OS map (1905-1907)
4. PRONI FER/4/2/1-3 Grand Jury Presentment Books for Baronies of Coole, Magherastephana and Tirkennedy (1808-33)
5. PRONI FER/4/3/1-2 – Grand Jury Presentment Books for County Fermanagh (1792-1833)
6. Morning Post, 30th October 1802
7. Saunders’s Newsletter 26th April 1803
8. Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 8th August 1807
9. Belfast Newsletter, 15th April 1814
10. Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 12th February 1816
11. Statesman (London), 27th December 1821
12. Saunders’s Newsletter, 24th April 1822
13. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 14th October 1824
14. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 11th August 1825
15. Roscommon & Leitrim Gazette, 18th June 1825
16. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 16th March 1826
17. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 1st January 1829
18. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 13th October 1836
19. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 2nd January 1840
20. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 23rd July 1840
21. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 18th November 1841
22. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 10th March 1842
23. Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet, 26th September 1844
24. Saunders’s Newsletter, 13th December 1849
25. Armagh Guardian, 14th November 1856
26. Fermanagh Times, 16th May 1901
27. Irish Field, 3rd August 1901
28. Fermanagh Herald, 24th December 1904
29. Northern Whig, 17th December 1923
30. Sixth report of the Select Committee on the roads from London to Holyhead and into the regulations for conveying His Majesty’s mail between Dublin and the interior of Ireland, House of Commons, printed 4th July 1822
31. Commissioners of Inquiry into collection and management of revenue in Ireland and Great Britain, 19th report, Appendix (1829)
32. Report from the Select Committee on the Turnpike Roads in Ireland, printed 26th July 1832 (contains map of post roads showing turnpikes, presentment roads and mail coach roads)
33. Report from the Select Committee on Post Communication with Ireland. London: House of Commons, printed 9th August 1832 (contains ‘A new map of Ireland showing the post towns and mail conveyances throughout’)
34. Moll, H (1695) A new map of Ireland according to Sr. W. Petty (but supplied wth. many additions which are not in his survey nor in any other map) divided into its provinces, counties & baronies. London: Sold by Philip Lea at the Atlas and Hercules in Cheapside (Norman B Leventhaal map and education centre)
35. Moll, Herman (1714) A new map of Ireland divided into its provinces, counties and baronies, wherein are distinguished the bishopricks, boroughs, barracks, bogs, passes, bridges & c. With the principal roads, and the common reputed miles. Ewart Map Collection, Queen’s University Belfast.
36. Taylor, G and Skinner, A (1778) Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland, surveyed 1777, Dublin: Wilson, W.
37. Larkin, William (1805) A Map of the Mail Coach Branching Cross and Bye Post Roads of Ireland. Ewart Map Collection, Queen’s University Belfast
38. Maps of the post-roads of Ireland, showing suggested improvements, adjoining owners etc. 1805-1816. 14 volumes. Held by National Library of Ireland (MAP 15 A 14)
39. Wakefield, E (1812) An Account of Ireland, statistical and political. Volume I. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown
40. The Traveller’s New Guide Through Ireland. (1815) Dublin: John Cumming
41. The Treble Almanack (for the years 1815 to 1825). Dublin: John Watson Stewart (babel.hathitrust.org)
42. Day, A and McWilliams , P (eds) (1990) OS Memoirs of Ireland Volume 4, Parishes of County Fermanagh I 1834-5. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies
43. Northern Ireland Road Map (1926) https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/
44. OS Half Inch map of Ireland (c.1969) https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/
45. OS 1:250k OpenData 1988 https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/
46. HED First survey card (HB12/03/040)

Secondary Sources:

47. Andrews, J H (1964) ‘Road planning in Ireland before the railway age’ Irish Geography Vol 5 Iss 1
48. Austin Bourke, P M Notes on some agricultural units of measurement in use in pre-famine Ireland. Irish Historical Studies, Mar 1965, Vol 14, No 55, pp.236-245
49. Hughes, A J (2015) The Post Office in Ireland, 1638 – 1840. Unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth
50. Maguire, Dermot (2005) Drumlone at the crossroads: A country area in county Fermanagh, history and heritage. Omagh: Grahams Printers
51. McCutcheon, W A (1980) The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland. Belfast: HMSO
52. McNeill, D. B. (1982) Public Transport in Fermanagh. Clogher Record. Vol 11, No 1, pp.31-42
53. Murphy, Joan & Murphy, Kieron. How Far to Dublin? Dublin Historical Record, Dec 1982, Vol 36, No 1, pp.21-26
54. O’Keeffe, P (1973) Papers presented during 1973/4: The Development of Ireland’s road network. Dublin: Institution of Engineers of Ireland, Civil Division
55. Reynolds, Mairead (1983) A History of the Irish Post Office. Dublin: MacDonnell Whyte Ltd
56. Rynne, C (2006) Industrial Ireland 1750-1930: an archaeology. Cork: Collins Press
57. Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts (SABRE) (https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk)
58. Trimble, W Copeland (1921) The History of Enniskillen, with reference to some manors in Co. Fermanagh. Volume III. Enniskillen: Impartial Reporter

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
Z. Rarity
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest

Evaluation

This collection of 12 (of an original 17) milestones along the Crom and Gola Roads is one of the most complete series of its kind in NI and constitutes one of the few surviving components of the late 18th / early 19th century mail coach system, perhaps the single most important communications network to be established throughout the entirety of these islands prior to the coming of the railways. The stones themselves have what appear to be a unique profiled top, are mostly well preserved, whilst their group value is enhanced by the existence along the same stretch of a contemporary coaching inn (HB12/03/045.)
Of the surviving stones in the series, this milestone is the most severely damaged. However, it is special, with its surviving form, material and accurate location, it makes a significant contribution to the narrative of the group.
It is important to note that when assessing a group, "the department will first consider each building against the criteria. If some are considered listable, the importance of the group will then be considered. Buildings not individually listable can meet the test as a result.”