98 The Fringe of the Road 



The material of these old mileposts and boundary 

 stones is as closely related to the underlying 

 soil as the trees and flowers in the hedgerows. In 

 counties where stone is abundant it was naturally 

 turned to this use, as to many others. But in 

 districts where the pits and quarries yield clay, 

 sand, gravel, or stone in thin slabs, like the well- 

 known Kentish rag, the most convenient material 

 is wood ; and only the great trunk roads are 

 found provided with stones to mark the miles. 

 Just so, in the neighbouring village churchyards, 

 only the well-to-do members of the community 

 at an earlier day have stones to mark their 

 resting-places among the wooden memorials of 

 their fellows. In the old forest region of Kent 

 and Sussex some mileposts remain which reflect 

 in a yet more close and striking manner the 

 characteristic products of the soil. This tract 

 was for centuries the chief centre of English iron 

 working. It still abounds in timber ; but there is 

 little or no stone which is suitable for fashioning into 

 pillars. The mileposts, therefore, are of oak, with 

 rude roman numerals of wrought iron fixed to 

 their faces. The parallel with churchyard monu- 

 ments is continued by the survival in the same part 

 of the country of some curious old sepulchral slabs 

 of cast iron. 



The vegetation that clothes the waste strip be- 

 side the road is in many cases a relic of antiquity 

 much older than any of these roadside posts and 

 stones. Where centuries of agriculture have 

 changed the surface and products of the surrounding 



