Tom Long's Post being painted

I returned from my dentist appointment in Dursley early this afternoon and took the scenic route ‘over the top’ via Minchinhampton Common. When I reached the six way cross roads I saw a man painting the famous Tom Long's Post, which indicates the directions. As soon as I passed over the tricky junction I knew I had to return to record the scene, but I couldn’t turn around for at least half a mile down the hill towards Brimscombe.

I parked down one of the roads, the one which is now closed, on the Common and walked back a couple of hundred yards to get a picture of the scene. As I neared the busy junction I saw a local 63 bus from Minchinhampton village heading for Sgtrouds, which actually pulled up just on the far side of the junction on the main road and a woman alighted and walked towards the post. The man painting the sign saw me, and her, but carried on. She crossed over the junction, walked up to me and asked for direction to Winstones Ice Cream factory, a locally renowned business on the edge of the hillside looking over Stroud, but at least a mile and a half away from this spot. The woman had an American accent and I did my best to show her the way, though half wondering how on earth she ended up in this scenario.

I then took this picture before crossing over to Tom Long’s Post and saying hello. Steve H. it transpires is a local parish councillor in Minchinhanmpton and they’d decided that since they couldn’t get anyone else, such as the Highways Department of the County Council, to maintain the famous old sign, they would do it themselves. Or at least Steve would., though the cold wind was getting the better of him and he did wonder when it would be finished. We had a good chat and a laugh and I mentioned that I knew Nick H., the chair of his council. We discussed the history of the area, the roads and their relatively new and somewhat recent layout. I have seen very old aerial photos of the Common, when the roads were still limestone tracks. 

The main road heading off into the distance was actually the main route from Stroud  to London which the stagecoaches used several times each day. This part of what is now the Common had been a major Iron Age encampment where subsequently the Romans also created earthworks close by this site. When the Norman invasion occurred Willian the Conqueror gave these lands to his sister. There are a lot of stories to be related.

Who was Tom Long is a key question. In my quick research after coming home I found this extract from an online article by Hugh Conway-Jones of the Gloucestershire Industrial Archaeology Society.

Tom Long's Post, Minchinhampton Common 
Tom Long’s Post is a modern signpost where a number of minor roads meet in the middle of Minchinhampton Common (SO 859 012). Although the present signpost is modern, the interest here is how the name Tom Long became associated with it. Several books suggest that Tom Long was a highwayman who was executed where he had committed his crimes. In fact most hangings took place at the gallows at Over or at the County Gaol in Gloucester, so if Tom Long was a highwayman, it is more likely that the post was where his body was hung in chains after execution as a deterrent to others. Another story is that Tom Long was a suicide who was buried at the cross-roads because he could not be buried in consecrated ground. 

There is some evidence that the name Tom Long’s Post came into common usage in the first half of the nineteenth century. An un-named direction post or crosspost is recorded at the cross-roads in the maps associated with turnpike road Acts of 1818 and 1821. While a highwayman could have been active or remembered during this period, there is no record of Tom Long as a highwayman in the Gaol Calendars which date from 1728.

However, Colonel Yarnold of Minchinhampton has put forward a totally different theory. He pointed out that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Tom Long was the nickname for a carrier (an old term for a coach service for people and goods) - like Tommy Atkins for a soldier or Jack Tar for a sailor . He suggests, therefore, that Tom Long’s Post was a setting-down and picking-up point for the carriers operating on the old road from Stroud to London which crossed the common. 

So the arrival of an American woman, on a coach nearly two hundred years later, at this lonely outpost at that particular moment in time seems quite interesting, well at least to me.


Another blog article is also quite interesting, written by ‘Magpieseven’, and can be found here.