BWMA's campaign against metric signage is proving successful. Here are some of the examples that have been reported. Please take similar action whenever you see metric direction or distance signs. The law, for once, is on our side, and it gives great satisfaction to compel a local authority to change back to traditional measure!
In response to his complaint about a metric direction sign in Windsor Great Park, E.J. Huxley of Egham received this assurance from The Crown Estate Office: "I took the opportunity of having a look at the sign myself and I fully endorse your views that the Crown Estate is being inconsistent with their signs, showing this one particular sign in metric rather than imperial measurements. I am, therefore, arranging for it to be changed to yards in the near future."
Likewise, Austin Spreadbury, one of our most effective activists, wrote to Oxfordshire County Council to complain of road signs on the A41 NW of Bicester which warned of pedestrian crossings "250m" and "200m ahead" and they were promptly changed to "275 yards" and "225 yards" respectively.
Again, Mrs Rosemary Wickenden of Staplecross received this assurance from East Sussex County Council: "The Council's present policy is to show distances expressed in imperial only, within the Hastings and St Leonards area; the only exceptions being height and width restriction signs where the distance may be shown in imperial and metric - which complies with the Department of Environment Transport and Regions' regulations." But beware that weasel word "present" - for how much longer?
A.A. Turner of Bromsgrove also had a success with Solihull Borough Council concerning contractors' signs in metric at road works. So did Jeffrey Titford MEP with Essex County Council, whose Assistant Engineer (Traffic and Safety) wrote to him on 23 January: "The County Council as traffic authority has made its legal position and the duties imposed on its agents very clear. I have since your correspondence written to all agents/contractors reminding them of the requirement to act within the legislation. Existing signing not complying with Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions will be corrected or replaced as soon as possible."
Mrs Flora Jenner of Etchingham in Sussex heard as follows from Bromley Borough Council's Technician Engineer (Traffic), in regard to Weight Limit signs on Masons Hill: "You are indeed correct that these signs have the distance to the bridge with the 10 tonne weight limit in metres rather than yards. In fact out of the four advance warning signs on the approaches to the bridge three of them are incorrect. I have therefore arranged for the word 'metres' on the three offending signs to be replaced with the word 'yds' as prescribed by the Regulations."
John Tomlin of Wigan scored against Halton Borough Council, whose Section Leader (Lighting) confirmed that: "You are correct in stating that the distance should be in yards not metres. The signs will be amended or replaced when resources permit." So can any trader charged with the offence of selling in pounds and ounces plead that his offending imperial scales "will be amended or replaced when resources permit"?
E.N. Rouse points out that the very first paragraph of the Introduction to the Highway Code states that "The Highway Code is essential reading for everyone. Its rules apply to all road users: pedestrians, horse riders and cyclists, as well as motorcyclists and drivers." Accordingly, local authority transport officials who try to excuse some metric distance signs on the grounds that they are "solely for the direction of pedestrians and are not intended for road users" should be told to consult the Highway Code.
J.M. Hill of Sedbergh received this extraordinary letter from a North Yorkshire County Council Divisional Engineer, concerning road signs in Wensleydale: "With reference to your letter... while I agree that signs with distances indicated in metres are not advisable I am not aware that they are illegal. However, the signs were ordered in error and adhesive tape had been ordered to change the distances to miles. Unfortunately, during the Christmas holiday all the signs were stolen and the replacements have now been ordered with imperial distances."
As Mr Hill commented: there is a surprising incidence of road signs being ordered in error, and one must wonder who is responsible and whether anybody is ever disciplined for these persistent errors? Also, the adhesive tape routine could be a cheap way of covering up the "error" with a view to removing it later or apologising, if necessary, for it having been removed "accidentally". He enquires, too, whether it would be illegal to remove illegal road signs without the knowledge of the local authority ("the A1234 phantom metric sign remover strikes again!"), but BWMA cannot countenance any such "vigilante" activity!
Patrick Carroll from Lowestoft received this equally strange letter from a Waveney District Council Engineer, concerning "shoreline closure signage" at Corton: "I acknowledge that the distances should have been displayed in imperial units. However, the signs have been erected as an emergency response to a safety hazard on the coastline. I am investigating options on minimising the risk of damage to property by the action of the sea, and the current year's budget must be utilised to its most beneficial effect. I will therefore amend the signage with distances in imperial units when physical replacement becomes necessary."
Does this mean that any shopkeeper threatened with prosecution can explain to the Trading Standards Officer that "the current year's budget must be utilised to its most beneficial effect and so I will replace my imperial scales with metric when physical replacement becomes necessary"!
Yet another means of evasion was adopted by the Head of Service (Traffic and Transportation) at Cardiff County Hall, who replied to Mr E.C.A. Phillips' complaint about a public car-park's restricted headroom signs by explaining: "The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions, which you quote from, apply to the public highway as adopted by the highway authority. The car-park concerned used to belong to Cardiff City Council, which was not the highway authority, and the height restriction signs were provided under separate regulations specifically applying to that car-park." Really? What "separate regulations"? He doesn't say!
He added: "The TSR&GD do not apply to the signs in question, even though the car-park is not administered by Cardiff Council, as the car-park is not on the adopted public highway." But it is a public car-park, administered by a highway authority, so he's wrong. This shows to what lengths authorities will go to wriggle out of the law - so long as those "lengths" are metric!
The notorious letter dated 22 January from Portsmouth City Council's Director of Corporate Services to Jeffrey Titford MEP was boldly headed "ILLEGAL METRIC PEDESTRIAN SIGNS - PORTSMOUTH CITY CENTRE" and stated: "I have indeed advised the Council's City Engineer on this matter. I accept the signs do not comply with the regulations but I have to tell you that it is not our intention to remove them." That would serve as another model for a retailer to copy, informing the Trading Standards Officer that "I accept that my imperial scales do not comply with the regulations but I have to tell you that it is not my intention to remove them."
The Yorkshire Post reported on 7 December that a Leeds City Council spokesman admitted, in connection with metric signs at road works near Wetherby, that "a batch of the wrong signs had been sent to the Council and they were being stockpiled ready to be returned but confirmed that one had accidentally been used. It will be removed and replaced using a sign with the correct distance." An RAC spokesman commented: "The idea of road signs is to present information to the most number of people in the simplest way. Posting distances in kilometres is not going to be particularly helpful." But where do all these "wrong signs" come from: who specifies and orders them?
The same query arises from a letter by the Brecks Countryside Project (funded by the East Anglian local authorities) to Kenneth Burton of Thetford, thanking him for his complaint concerning metric finger posts and explaining that: "Originally, the intention was to have the distances given in miles and kilometres because many walkers and cyclists use Ordinance [sic!] Survey maps that are marked out with kilometre grid squares. Unfortunately a mistake was made and the finger posts were installed with only kilometre distances. The mistake will be corrected as soon as possible."
Now, leaving aside the fact that most OS maps still in circulation were produced before they went metric, why are "finger posts with only kilometre distances" produced at all?
Please keep writing to local authorities, and let us see the reponses you get. These replies are useful, whatever they say.
Steve Tamblin
If, before the mid-1970s, you sat a geography "A" level exam, you will be familiar with them. If you took your family holidays in Britain, you very probably purchased one. If you regard them with the affection that many people do, you almost certainly possess one or more. They are the One Inch maps of the Ordnance Survey.
The OS map was not just a driver's navigational aid. It was a portrayal of the landscape and, dare I say it, a minor work of art. So much was to be found in so little space and only occasionally did it become a little overcrowded.
Take, for instance, sheet 187 (Plymouth, 1961, revised 1964). This informed the hardy walker returning from Dartmoor and making his way between Lee Moor and Penn Moor (grid square SX5963) that he will pass an "Enclosure & Hut Circle", and an "Enclosed Hut Group", a "Cairn Circle" and a "Stone Row", before coming across more recent human activity at the Lee Moor china clay works. Here he would find not a slurry pit or lagoon but a "Mica Pit". Such precision!
And not only in the descriptions but in the drawing too. A One Inch map had a crispness of style that pleased the eye (even if it was sometimes necessary to resort to a magnifying glass to identify the remote farmhouse you had chosen for your holiday). "A" roads strode boldly across the sheet, vividly depicted in a truly arterial red. The sun shone, the world turned, and the dreaded Exeter by-pass lay ahead...
My late father's 1960 sheet 163 (Barnstaple), purchased for a 1963 holiday in North Devon, may be stained brown by ancient Sellotape, soiled by childish scrawl and creased and crumpled from being creased and crumpled into pockets and holdalls, but after 37 years it remains attached to its buff and red paper cover.
My First Series metric sheet 164 (Oxford) has long since shed its cover, perhaps too ashamed to reveal its true identity. The first OS metric maps were an exercise in deception, a photographic enlargement of One Inch maps in washed-out colours, with metric spot heights and contours at absurd intervals - 15 metres, 30, 46 (150 ft to you and me), 61 (200 ft), 76 metres (250 ft). The scale might have become 1:50,000 but they were still visibly One Inch maps. [As it happens, 1:50,000 is very close to 11/4 in: 1 mile anyway!]
Then came the revised and redrawn Landranger series. I suppose the new name was needed because "2cm to 1km" does not fall so lightly off the tongue. Given the larger scale, one might have hoped that the new maps would set new standards in clarity, but no. Townscapes are a fuzzy blur and roads are crudely delineated by lines thick and black yet unable to prevent their colours from leaking onto the verges. Footpaths and cycleways, National Trails and Long Distance Routes criss-cross chaotically.
The contours, now at 10-metre intervals, are so feint that the landscape recedes before the eyes - a landscape in which, apparently, there no longer exists "rough pasture", although I suppose we should be grateful that we are informed of the presence of a "spoil heap, refuse tip or dump", if only to avoid it as we hike along the pink-dashed footpaths.
Nor is it only the large-scale folding map that has suffered the attention of the conversion maniacs. A minor bastion of traditional measures, the popular OS Motoring Atlas, has also fallen recently. In the 1999 edition, spot heights are converted to metres and the relief colour shading key, although retaining its curious imperial divisions of 600, 1000, 1400 and 2000 ft, was turned upside down in the legend to give precedence to the metric conversions of 183, 305, 427 and 610. This latter change has been reversed, but the modern metricator has nevertheless left his mark. The scale of this atlas is 1:190,080.
The legend on the inside of the front cover of the 2001 edition informs us that this is 1 cm to 1.9 km. Well, almost so, give or take the odd 80 centimetres, but in reality it is exactly 1 inch to 3 miles! To be fair, we are informed of that fact too, but the metric conversion is given precedence. It is on the front cover that our 80 centimetres go missing, as here the scale is rounded down to 190,000.
Perhaps the cartographers were confused by their 1997 edition which proclaimed itself as 1:200,000 and 3 miles to 1 inch on its cover, yet inside, in the legend, as 1:190,080 or "about 3 miles to 1 inch". Such muddle and confusion!
I shall leave the reader to ponder upon the obvious contradictions that exist in an atlas where spot heights are given in metres while contours are measured in feet and distances in miles. And, of course, the maps have been redrawn in an inferior style, most apparent in the indistinct relief colouring which fades into the background in the same manner as the contours on the folding sheets, with which the parallels are clear.
The modern Ordnance Survey does more than produce maps for motorists and walkers. It offers a wide variety of mapping and geographical data services to national and local government, educational establishments and private businesses. Paper maps account for a decreasing proportion of its turnover and perhaps that declining importance is reflected in the quality of its current products, although it is possible that their new chief executive might show a new attitude towards these publications.
I recently suggested to the OS that a revival of the One Inch series might be a worth-while venture, but they replied that they "did not see that this would be a practical or financially viable option." And yet only recently I discovered a new one-inch map. True, it was drawn in the modern style, but its scale was 1:63,360 and it bore the OS logo. It belonged to the "Tourist" series and seemed such a curious find.
The OS boasts that computerised mapping techniques allow more accurate plotting and more frequent updating. How unfortunate that these techniques do not permit more accurate drawing. The Landranger series are not so much maps as sketches, diagrams, doodles in pastel shades and gaudy pink - and metric to boot.
So, almost 40 years on, let us return to our walker and his pink pathfinder. He will discover from sheet 202 (Torbay & South Dartmoor) that the Lee Moor works have expanded enormously, depositing numerous "spoil tips" and obliterating the "Cairn Circle" and "Stone Row". The "Enclosure & Hut Circle" and the "Enclosed Hut Group" are downgraded to mere "Settlements".
The "Mica Pit" is now a nameless feature, having expanded to engulf a farmstead. A mile of moorland road has disappeared and with it an easy walk from Tolchmoor Gate to Cadover Bridge. But the sun still shines and the world still turns, even if the Exeter by-pass is now just a busy ring road, long superseded by the M5. And in your local library, the One Inch map has been moved from Reference to History.
Robin Heath
I have for many years been involved in the surveying, geometry and structure of Stone Circles, which were built throughout what are now the British Isles and NW France between c. 5,000 and 3,500 years ago. In this, I followed in the footsteps of the late Professor Alexander Thom, who discovered and proved the existence of the "Megalithic Yard" (MY), a unit of 2.72 ft. 21/2 of these define a "Megalithic Rod" of 6.8 ft., so that 5 MY = 2 MR.
Perimeters and the internal geometry of non-circular stone rings were commonly found by Thom to measure in whole numbers of MR. In addition to the metrology of stone rings, Thom pioneered what he came to term megalithic science, a subject embracing accurate astronomical alignments and an apparent obsession with numerical patterns held by Neolithic man.
Alexander Thom was Professor of Engineering Science at Oxford University from 1945-61. He refined the value of MY throughout the last 40 years of his working life, until shortly before his death in 1985. He defined the unit in the first of three major works published by Oxford University Press (Megalithic Sites in Britain), following detailed surveys of over 500 sites in person from Shetland to Brittany. Statistical analysis showed that 2.72 ft was accurate plus-or-minus 0.003 ft.
In my book, Sun, Moon & Stonehenge, I show that if one assumes that 1 MY represents a lunation period - the time between two new moons - then the length of 1 imperial foot marks the required calendrical period between the end of the lunar year (12 lunations, which take 354.367 days) and the end of the solar year of 365.242 days. This discovery was so astonishing as to justify spelling out again: if the lunar year is represented by 12 MY then 1 ft corresponds precisely to the extra 10.875 days to coincide with the end of the solar or seasonal year.
Furthermore, the period between the end of the solar year and 13 lunations - 18.656 days - is represented by another unit of length from antiquity, the Royal Cubit of 20.63" or 1.72 ft. The Royal Cubit is indeed a most ancient measure, known to Newton who, drawing on the work of the metrologist Greaves, deduced that a value of 20.63" would make the King's Chamber within the Great Pyramid exactly 20 x 10 of this same measure.
In the 1880s, Sir William Flinders Petrie accurately measured the Great Pyramid, using a 10" Gambay theodolite, and identified 20.63" as a primary unit of length also within other Egyptian dynastic buildings.
Hence the equally astonishing revelation that 1 MY = 1 ft + 1 RC. Assuming that the MY was the primary unit, then the derivative foot and cubit appear to have formed a logical and essential part of the astronomical and calendrical researches of our Neolithic ancestors.
If, however, the foot preceded the MY in time - and here we must remember that 1/1,000th of a degree of arc around the equatorial circumference of the Earth is just 365.244 ft in length! - then knowledge of the roundness of the Earth must have predated use of the MY... i.e. well before 3,000 BC. There are no other choices readily apparent! It would have been logical for the key calendrical period - the 10.875 days between the ends of the lunar and solar years - to have been represented by an existing length, and it does appear that the foot of 12.00 inches was adopted as that length.
My story doesn't end there, for there are 12.368 lunations in a full year, of which the fractional part (0.368) is almost exactly 7/19 (0.36842104). Using decimal fractions totally obscures the astronomic wisdom hidden in twelve and seven-nineteenths. As a vulgar fraction, 12.368421 = 235/19, immediately informing an astute astronomer of a nineteen-year synchronicity between lunar and solar cycles. Thus, 235 lunations will last exactly nineteen years. The correspondence is astoundingly accurate - a mere 2 hours [of error] in 19 years - and it is termed the Metonic cycle.
Let's take it even further. A length of 0.368 MY = 1 ft. Again assuming that 1 MY represents 1 lunation, then, totting up the exact number of lunations in the year, all one has to do is add 1 inch to 1 MY each time one observes a new moon, because these extra inches will add up to 0.368 lunations, the required over-run.
When demonstrating accurate calendrical predictions with my student groups over the years, I use a plastic Woolworth's foot ruler, marked in inches, to predict lunations and eclipses to the day, years in advance. Not very megalithic but highly accurate and apparently using those same measures of antiquity now ironically rendered illegal by the government of the same lands that originally built most of these great circles and invented the mathematics.
Many of the greatest metrologists of our age have suggested that the primary units of length were derived from units of time. To quote that greatest metrologist, Stecchini, who died only in 1999: "... all serious scholars of ancient and mediaeval measures have always known that measures of volume and weight are derived from the units of length."
During the late 19th century, two other eminent scholars, the aforementioned Flinders Petrie and Carl-Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt, each concluded that ancient measures were so rigorously organised that they must have a basis on some absolute natural measure. I suggest that this absolute natural measure was the lunation period.
It now appears to me, therefore, that the Megalithic Yard may be considered a calendrical analogue of the lunation period, and that the foot and the cubit are proportioned within it to reveal the duration of the solar year, following the twelfth lunation or lunar year.
The conclusions of this research have enormous implications for archaeology and human pre-history as well as for metrology and mathematics generally. For a start they confirm the primary connection between the science of measurement and the Moon.
They also clearly offer one plausible explanation as to the historical basis for the foot and its twelve-fold division into inches, contrary to the popular impression that the foot and the inch were merely random evolutions from the anatomical foot and thumb-width, or derivatives respectively from Roman and Saxon measures. Our system of customary measures is not only coherent - it is also almost certainly celestial. Feet and inches are lunations better!
[Robin Heath is the author of four books - including Sun, Moon & Stonehenge - a 256-page, fully illustrated exploration of the megalithic landscape and its implications for modern culture (ISBN 0-9526151-7-7, £12.99 from any bookshop or tel. 01239 613224).
Once a senior lecturer in mathematics and engineering, he now writes and lectures widely on matters megalithic, living in West Wales. It is a privilege to publish this article, specially written for BWMA, that summarises his latest researches.]
Stephen M. Dixon
I have a point of view on the subject of compulsory metrication and what appears to be more of an ideological rather than practical objective driving government policy, based on my professional background as a qualified, professional archivist.
The consequences of a society discouraged from or criminalised for using imperial weights and measures must logically extend beyond market stalls, retail outlets and the market place in general. It is clearly apparent that educationally and culturally at large society is intended to convert to metric in such a way that a national amnesia pertaining to traditional measurements is being induced.
This will put heritage professionals like myself in a difficult position as custodians and guardians of the cultural heritage. Archives largely contain references to imperial measures. A researching public, ranging from academics to householders consulting records including title deeds, charters, maps and house plans will be confronted increasingly by information that is illegal in a different context and of which they will have little or no official knowledge or awareness.
The Public Record Office, the UK and English national archives, holds 130 miles of records; the London Metropolitan Archives 30 miles; and other local government archives offices between 2-6 miles each on average. Added to these are the vast corporate, academic and commercial sectors' archives. This is a significant cultural resource and one liable to become arcanely obscure to posterity if imperial measures are proscribed. To this proscription of an important part of the cultural heritage will be attached a stigma apparently nurtured subliminally by the courts, which can already be over-ruled by the EU.
While EU and UK legislation may stop short of the destruction of archives so contradictory of their political philosophy (see "The devil lies in the detail: the danger posed by the European Union to Christianity" published in the October issue of Christian Order by Dr Gregory Slysz), the precedent for extending cultural vandalism to the burning of archives can be found recently in Tibet, Bosnia and Kosovo. Nazi Germany, Russia and revolutionary France have also visited this solution on their own and others' heritage.
The lesson seems clear. If a stand cannot be made against compulsory metrication now, far greater damage to our cultural heritage may yet take place. The obvious extension of proscription of imperial measures is eradication of trial by jury, the right to silence, habeas corpus and presumption of innocence and in turn, in order to support the basis for their eradication, the destruction of the archives that record their constitutional integrity.
While this may seem a distant prospect, the signs are clear and the EU is nothing if not insidiously gradual in its development. We already know there are plans for an EU-wide educational curriculum and archives specifically are threatened by the Malvine Project, the project for the harmonisation of member states' archives.
I hope the legal use of imperial weights and measures can be upheld. It is certainly necessary for the wider implications to be taken into account. I hope for a judgment in favour of the non-criminalisation of imperial measures.
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