Milestones - A Waymarking.com Category

The primary purpose of a milestone is to inform the travelling public of distances and directions to travel to various destinations. This distinguishes them from benchmarks, survey stones, trig points and so on whose primary audience is of surveyors. Guide posts, which are stones with directions but no distance are also acceptable.

In the automobile age, milestones have been superseded by sheet metal signs, readable from a moving car, and latterly by the in-car GPS satnav, but many remain as a reminder of a time when the pace of travel was such that navigation information could be read from a roadside stone.

Due to the fact that they have been superseded, milestones are typically of historic interest.

History and Further Information

The first great road-builders in Europe were the Romans. As the saying goes "all roads lead to Rome". Milestones beside Roman roads naturally indicated the distance to Rome, no other destination was necessary! (specifically to the millarium aureum or "golden milestone"). Obviously many of these are now in museums. Some Roman milestones remain in Britain, see roman-britain.org for more details. Many Roman Milestones or bornes millaires are in France. For details of the Lyon area see Archeolyon (in French), and there is more information on French Roman Roads (voies romaines) here.

In the UK milestones of various kinds exist. Some belonging to formal series, others not. For example, in 1697 William III passed an Act decreeing that in the more remote parts of the kingdom, where two or more paths intersected, local surveyors were to erect guide stones known as guide stoops showing the way to the nearest market town. There is a series of geocaches associated with these. Milestones are also found on canals, for example the Leeds Liverpool Canal

Definition
You are looking for distance markers which are embedded in the ground or in walls with destination names and/or distance inscribed. Nearly always these will be of stone, although some are of cast iron.

Some places have a "zero milestone" like the millarium aureum described above. These too are of interest, even though they don't have a distance and a destination (they ARE the destination).