A page for things that don’t easily fit into one of the other major categories:

Victorian Pillar Boxes

Fourteen Victorian pillar boxes have been found in the Roath/Splott/Adamsdown areas of Cardiff and one Victorian post box.  May be there are a few more hidden away?  Click on Victorian Pillar Boxes to find out more.

Milestones

This ancient milestone is preserved in the triangular garden of the old Roath Branch Library, Newport Road.  Photographed in 1891, the inscription seems to read “From the Town Hall in Cardiff 1 mile”. This would be the High Street Town Hall, the second in Cardiff’s history, which was demolished in 1861. The stone probably dates from the 1760s when the turnpike trusts were established, and it appears on George Yates’s 1799 map of Glamorgan.  This probably makes it one of the oldest surviving man-made objects in Roath!

It appears as if the original position of the Newport Road / Four Elms Lane milestone was on the north side of Newport Road, shown here on a map from around 1900, before Roath Library was constructed.

With the old Roath Library building currently vacant, the triangle of land in front of the building is overgrown and the milestone getting harder to see.  Fortunately we have been assured by the Council that the community group taking a lease on the property are aware of the milestone and are working closely with CADW, heritage planners and Heritage Lottery so the milestone will be included and protected during any works.

Roath milestone outside former Roath Library, photographed in May 2019 – lets hope it survives. 

This milestone used to stand outside the bus depot on Newport Road (opposite Rover Way)