Expediency of measuring distances from a Common Centre in London

No. 211 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - July 18, 1835

Expediency of measuring distances from a Common Centre in London.--The Roman roads in Britain were all from London Stone, still extant in Cannon Street. No defect in our improved modern metropolis is more inconvenient than the want of such a stone, the various roads from London being now measured from ten or eleven different places, two, three, and even four miles distant from each other. The catalogue is curious: Hyde Park Corner and Whitechapel Church; the Surrey side of London Bridge and of Westminster Bridge; Shoreditch Church; Tyburn Turnpike; Holborn Bars (long since removed); "the place where St. Giles's Pound formerly stood;" "the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood;" "the Standard in Cornhill" (of which no tradition remains, its exact site being unknown); and "the Stones End in the Borough," which moves with the extension of the pavement. Thus the actual distance of any place cannot be known without minute inquiry and local knowledge of London. The easy remedy consists in adopting the mileage of the Post Office, when it shall have been re-measured from the new site of that office, the frontage of which grand centre of communication could not be more appropriately adorned than by an obelisk which would become a London Stone, inscribed with the names and distances of large provincial towns, in imitation of that which stood in the Forum of antient Rome. The vicinity of St. Paul's Cathedral, the most conspicuous object in London, recommends the New Post Office especially for this purpose; and turnpike road trustees would not refuse to accommodate to it their milstones, under the direction of the road-surveyor or of the Post Office.--Appendix B. to Parish Register Abstract for 1831.