As you can see, it has had a makeover, and is all freshly repainted. You can even see (in the bottom shot) how they mount the fingers one on top of each other, and can angle them just so. The post is topped by a London Underground-style circle and crosspiece with 'Dorset Red Post' on it, and the Ordnanace Survey grid reference (minus the letters that identify the 100 x 100 kilometre square, in this instance SY).
These red posts are scattered around the West of England, and are not at all numerous, which makes them pretty special. Dorset has four of them. I wrote a post featuring the one at Benville, north-west of here (see Blood-spattered signposts, and transportation for life on 23rd October 2016), and reiterated what a passing chappie, who seemed to know his stuff, had to say about why these posts were painted red, and not the usual white. The gist of it being that condemned men were usually hanged on gibbets erected at crossroads, and left there, blood dripping from their lacerations, to be pecked by crows until they rotted away. All as an Awful Warning not to steal turnips if you were hungry, nor to be rude to the squire. Naturally the adjacent signpost would also be blood-red. Which all sounds like a good explanation, except that the best place for setting up a gibbet - to get maximum exposure and visual impact - is on a high place, in some bleak and windswept spot, where it can be seen for miles, like this one I saw last year near Elsdon in Northumberland:
They hang 'em high in the north east!
The Winterbourne Tomson red post on the A31 is basically in flat meadowland. The Benville red post I saw in 2016 was half-way down a hill. Here it is. Remarkably similar in style - perhaps Dorset County Council repaired and repainted both at the same time:
And now I've discovered an article on the Internet that has an explanation for the redness that seems to make sense. See http://yertiz.co.uk/four-red-fingerposts-dorset/. The writer of that article offers a rather convincing theory that as the four Dorset red posts are all the same distance from the county gaol in Dorchester, they must mark the old resting-points, or muster-points, that were used when marching prisoners to incarceration or transportation. And in the case of the A31 red post, he points to the farm just down the road, which is called Botany Bay Farm, and a pub not far away called the Botany Bay - that spot (now part of Sydney in New South Wales) being the Australian landing-place of choice for transported prisoners. Such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who tried to set up a farmworkers' union just down the road, and got sent Down Under for their pains.
There are apparently modern regulations on signposts that require the local authorities to not only keep traditionally-styled posts like this in good order, but to preserve their original colour as an historical matter. So for centuries to come these posts will be there, just as now, even if the contemporary navigation systems in the conveyances of the time won't need any such roadside aids.
Our age can do almost everything much worse than it was done in the past. Rubbish mild steel posts rotting in double quick time and a danger to the public. I cannot ever see a preservation order being made for them...
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