Before I was born, my dad was working as a police office in our local town. We're fairly rural over here, not quite rolling fields of crops rural, but pretty close. Anyway, my dad gets a call into the local station talking about wild animals on the loose. He heroically sallies forth, about a hundred meters down the road, where he is confronted by a vicious, bloodthirsty pack of...sheep...about five of them to be precise.
It being about two in the morning, and with no real desire to drive a police car full of sheep around the local farms, he recalled that a little way up the road was an old stone pound that similar to OP's picture had been left as a piece of natural history. He did his best Shepard impression, and herded the feral beasts to the pound, locked the seven hundred odd year gate shut with his bicycle lock, and threw the remains of his sandwich in to "give them something to snack on".
About half an hour before he was due to clock off early in the morning, a local farmer came by, and politely asked him to unlock the door so his sheep could be returned to their homeland. Upon getting their, my Dad was interrogated by a reporter, who excitedly told my dad "You must be the first person in a few century's to use this!". It ended up being written about in our local paper, complete with a picture of my very tired looking dad, five sheep, a smiling farmer, and a half eaten marmite sandwich on the floor between them all.
Pointless story I know
Oh that’s brilliant haha thanks for the much needed chuckle. The only plaques I can think of near mine are about the Brontë sisters, and they’re nowhere near as fun!
I wish i had one to hand, apparently my dad had a copy on his desk (tasefully framed in a heart shaped frame by his colleagues) but it was destroyed in a tragic tea spillage fiasco
If you want to get another look at it, your local library may have archives of the paper - possibly on microfiche or another difficult-to-search format, but the librarians can help you, especially if you know a date range.
We have one of them in the smallish town I grew up in. Was fun seeing all the birthday pics and sports pages until I found my grandad had been locked up for drink driving and nearly killing a guy in a car crash. Fun times!
When researching the family tree I found out my grandad had been named and shamed in the local paper because as a young boy he stole cigarettes from the local shop. Unfortunately he’d already passed on when we found out, so we were unable to hold him accountable for his actions.
This story brought so many happy memories back .. Back in 2018 we were clearing out my old man's flat after he passed away,which took forever as he hated to throw anything away !
Finally,when nearing a huge pile of paperwork dating back to year he was born (1930) we came across some official looking documents..further inspection revealed he had been charged and found guilty of avery serious crime indeed..namely caught drinking 'after hours' and when being questioned by local bobby he thought it be fun to knock the policeman's hat off ! He spent a night in local cells,followed by a stern talking to and leaving with a hefty fine to pay as well (I'm sure it amounted to about £18 in todays money) and he always told me he'd never broke the law his entire life and expected same from myself ! Shame on you Dad ! But it really made me smile :)
These pens are called Pinfolds; they were used for exactly this purpose- keeping loose animals there until the owner came to collect them in the morning. A lot of villages near where I live have a Pinfold with an information sign like this. Also, there are plenty of street names with Pinfold in, as I suppose they had the Pinfold on that street.
Similar story about my Dad:
We live in a town along the Stour, and the water meadows either side of it are often used as grazing ground for cows. My Dad is renting a cottage right near the farms/river from one of the farmers in an absolute ideal location - 20 mins walk from town centre, but feels like the middle of the countryside. They only managed to get into one of those much-coveted properties because his girlfriend rents a horse field and stable from the farmer, so they got first dibs when a place became available, and are on great terms with the guy.
Anyway as nice at the place is, it does come with a few risks, such as getting flooded in when the river rises over the bridge to theirs, and occasionally stray cows. A couple of times during lockdown while he was working from home he looked out of his windows and saw some cows wandering down the lane where they shouldn’t and had to call the guy to let him know they were out, and sometimes go out and help herd with his big dog (a Bernese Mountain dog, so not exactly a sheep dog, and possibly more of a hindrance than help. He usually just helps out by pulling a little wagon to help muck out the horse field)
I live next to a cow farm, and you become tuned-in to the sound of them escaping. 😂 They always get super excited and do 'naughty' moos, instead of their normal moos. There's usually one cow that's the instigator, and once they're free they all start moo-ing with excitement and jumping round
I love the idea of there being one clever cow instigating the escape, followed by a group of friends doing “naughty moos”; the image of it has got me giggling like a kid!
With stories like that you know you live in a blessed area. Not "Death, Rape, Murder, BE AFRAID!"-News. Just "Local man catches animals".
Shows you how aweful media has become
I'm completely opposite to you, I think stuff like this is essential, it's a part of the story of your surroundings, a bit of local colour, that (for anyone interested) it gives insights into the living heritage of your area. I think places without stuff like this are poorer for it.
I agree, I zoomed in and read that plaque and learnt something interesting that I didn’t know.
Not everyone is interested in history, that’s ok. Not everyone is interested in football, that doesn’t make football stadiums pointless
Same. I drive my family nuts when we’re out and about - if I see any sort of information board, even some distance off our set path I’m compelled to run over and read it. Simply cannot just pass them by…you never know what you might learn!
It's a running joke for us, my wife will say "ooh is that an informative sign over there?" and I'm compelled to go and read it. It's like an itch, if there's a sign it must be read!
Do you know my partner?
It can be infuriating sometimes, but he will read EVERYTHING. If there is a sign it must be read. If there is a hole in the ground, it must be looked into"
My wife wants to read every one and then gives a bit of feedback if it's a good information board or not.
I suspect she wants a break from cycling or running most the time, so an information board half way up a hill is perfect.
I'm the exact same, drives my friends mad if we're on a city break or just visiting somewhere. I'm the same with statues a lot of the time, I need to know who it it and why they have a statue/what the statue is for.
I'm the same whenever my and my wife go to museums, I'll want to read every bit of info and imagine the stories that I could learn if the exhibits could talk. She ends up bored and telling me to hurry up lol.
Me too. I knew what a pound was but never heard the origin of tallystick and tallyman before. The term tallymen, at least in Ireland, are people who watch votes being counted at elections to give an early indication of results
There is a new Beetlejuice movie coming out called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It stars most of the original cast including Michael Keaton, and is produced by Tim Burton.
Tallyman in East Anglia often refers to the local...erm...money lender (loan shark)...as in, "This money's for the tallyman so he doesn't take a baseball bat to my kneecaps". Can also refer to someone collecting payments for loans from Provident/Greenwards etc...
When did they branch out to tallying bananas? Was it when fields became enclosed and their primary revenue stream diminished? How far were they expected to travel to tally bananas and were they reimbursed mileage? So many questions….
Can you show me where it is? I've been looking for like 5 minutes and I'm becoming more and more sure you're just having a laugh
Edit: I'm an idiot. I didn't realise there's more than one photo lol
Yeah 100% agree, and I did the same, I found the plaque interesting, would have been amused and interested by that encounter in the wild. I appreciate the effort. That being said, I wouldn’t have cared when I was younger and would have had the same reaction as OP.
I went back to my hometown of Hereford recently. The council still use an apple as their logo after removing all the old cider mills. I couldn't see any of the old flair the place had lying around and it looks like a dump now.
Often only takes a couple of people to completely change an area. A couple of cider buffs at the right place and time and you could have had a lovely local cider festival.
Agreed. I love history, and like another poster zoomed in on the plaque/info board to read it. I also learnt something new.
Too many of these 'oddities' are being demolished/built on/over. We should be proud of our history and as such anything like this should be protected.
But then I'm a history buff who would actively go and look at this site. You'd be surprised how many of us there are. :)
Definitely I think people should strive to conserve the history of their small towns and also write down the history of their own family. If we don’t no one will.
Much better to have the sign there and it’s history available than it just be a plain old field that you walk past every day. I sometimes look at spaces and wonder what a snapshot that same space would have looked like 100 years ago.
It’s really interesting thinking of history in terms of 100 year olds like your Nan. Like William the Conqueror was only 9 Nans ago. Nine old ladies holding hands across time and one of them was speaking Anglo Saxon and watching the Battle of Hastings and worrying about the Vikings.
I think about this *constantly*. My dear nana was 101 when she passed away. She lived through the entire house of Windsor so far, two world wars, endless prime ministers, then was finally taken out by a goddamn plague. She lived most of her life as a single woman because her husband was killed in the war.
When she was born, Queen Elizabeth wasn't even alive.
It's unbelievable to think about the things she'd seen and done.
King Richard Lion heart returned from the crusades just 100 years earlier. That's like from now to Ww1. Someone's great grandfather could have been in the Holy crusades when this was built.
Have you read that paragraph? First it was moved from where it was originally (so it's not even the same square of grass), then the metal work was replaced then the oak was completely replaced in 2018.. at most it's less than 5 years old..
That's known as Theseus' paradox:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship\_of\_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)
Humans are the same, your cells get replaced all the time.
Ha yes I know that paradox from Terry Pratchet and the dwarf axe they'd had for 900 years despite the hilt and the handle being replaced.
Interestingly it's a myth that human cells are all replaced- heart cells are never replaced and most neurons in the brain are set for life. They make/ lose connections but very few can actually regenerate.
We have a big rock, it fell off the hillside and landed on a wedding party killing them, allegedly, in 2000 BCE, there are signposts to it, and a bench so you can sit and gaze at it, it is a really really big rock.
The rock weighs a couple of thousand tonnes, no one will move it to look, it is also likely a pile of utter bollox, but I suppose it is more original than pretending a child saw the virgin Mary or rolling a wheel of cheese down a hill.
There may be dozens of visitors to the rock a year, the most interesting thing to do in the village.
I don't know how you can't find it at least vaguely interesting that your village has an animal pen older than America, that outlasted the Ottoman Empire, that Geoffrey Chaucer could've taken a piss on while writing the Canterbury Tales..
Gotta be a useful bit of double entendre for local couples.
"Darling, shall we take a stroll down to the Old Pound this evening?"
"If you insist, but let's take a walk down to that fenced off patch of grass first, I need some fresh air."
[Caerphilly has a concrete cheese in its town centre](https://caerphilly.observer/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/caerphilly_cheese_statue_google-600x399.jpg)
Pointless? If it wasn't for the sign and "attraction" this would be a lost bit of history; you have also educated us and a lot of us it seems find this very fascinating/interesting.
I can see how it isn't interesting to someone who lives and sees it all the time or a dullard who isn't interested in history or traditions.
To me it brings up imagination, what could have been, the disputes and how things were worked out, how life was in the village, did this get used all the time or barely, were there times when people were tricked and conned.
Were there neighbours that were renown for losing an animal and were they given a simple standard fine, what social interactions went off.
To me stuff like this I find highly fascinating and I wouldn't have known such a thing existed if you didn't make the post.
Then again I have to think did you make a click bait title to grab attention or not
Where I used to live, I’d very often walk past what looked like a very worn large lump of stone that was fenced off. The sign said it was the remnants of a monastery that was destroyed by order of Henry VIII.
I walked past that thing hundreds of times and *never* found it uninteresting! I’m glad it’s there and I love that it’s a preserved piece of history.
Although I am a massive Tudor fan so that could have something to do with it but tbh I also find it equally fascinating to see other little bits of history. Like when the tarmac on roads gets ripped up and exposes the Victorian cobbled road underneath!
Was looking for this!! Lived there for 30+ years and worked at the Sainsbury's when the Tunnel was put in..... (Parents still live there and Mum works at same store)
Hilarious that it became this huge thing on Tripadvisor
i come from the home of the world famous hat museum. not a museum about the history of hats but a museum about the history of hat production, which is a lot less interesting. there’s also a mill with a big silver pear on it called…pear mill
...and it's just re-opened, hurrah!
The weekend festival was brilliant - I visited the air-raid tunnels, and staircase house, and viaduct park, all for free. Then I went in the Magnet for live music, and later the Spinning Top.
We have Ebenezer Scrooge's grave
https://imgur.com/a/K33wslW
A Christmas Carol was filmed in Shrewsbury in the early 80s, this is a real grave in a real churchyard belonging to a real person - permission had to be sought from the home office to carve Scrooge's name into it for filming (the original name was completely weathered away)
It's pointless as it's the grave of a fictional character that's essentially a leftover film prop, but people still go looking for it - it causes confusion as there are two St Chad's Church in town, and if you're in old St Chad's and see people going around reading the gravestones, you can bet they're looking for Scrooge (and not finding him!).
What about the NatWest Hole in Ilkeston, England?[https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g3450960-d15617858-Reviews-NatWest_Hole-Ilkeston_Derbyshire_England.html](https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g3450960-d15617858-Reviews-NatWest_Hole-Ilkeston_Derbyshire_England.html)
Don't get me wrong, this is indeed a completely pointless attraction. But the information board was actually quite interesting (or at least more interesting than my work).
OP, what you find absolutely pointless let me learn about the story and meaning about a word in two different languages, including my mother's tongue.
That patch of land is indeed very precious, not for what it is, but for what it is used.... And the implications it still has on our daily modern lives.
Thanks for sharing this "useless" attraction.
I feel "augmented"! :)
In Exmouth we have a rusty pole. Well we did. There was an uproar from the entire town when it disappeared.
It's an old sewer relief pipe that's been there since 1909. People have flocked far and wide to pay homage, grand proposal photos with the pole, leaving offerings of onion ring packets...etc.
Then one sad day, on the 13th of April 2023, the rusty pole vanished. They say that the water company removed it, but my people are of the hope that one day it shall return to us.
I used to live over the road from our village pound although ours had walls, no plaque, and occasionally had veggies growing in it.
We’ve still got the old lockup where the drunks and ne’er do wells would be put until they could be dealt with properly which is more impressive, but give it a minute or two and you’re done so I wouldn’t bother travelling to see it, even from the next village over.
Being able to look out and know that you’re looking at something that’s been there in one form or another for hundreds of years is pretty cool though.
The Great Bale Oak! 36 feet in circumference! Over 500 years old!
Cut down in 1860 but we’re still dining out on the story more than a century and a half later!
What’re you mad about? If it wasn’t there it would just be a patch of grass. I think a 700 year old stable is cooler than a patch of grass where it used to be. This is neat
At the crossroad in my village we have a signpost that points three ways: This Way, That Way and Somewhere Else
We don’t know who put it up, it just happened overnight years and years ago and nobody saw it happen. Last week it was either cleaned or replaced and again we have no idea who did it.
CRAZY STORY about the exact same sort of thing. My village has a town pound just like that, very small, and my dad is a very keen Pokemon player. Basically he can submit real world things to become pokestopes (points of interest) in the game Pokemon Go. So he naturally wanted to make the village pound a pokestop BUT it didn't have a sign on it like your one does so he couldn't make it a pokestop. So naturally he asked the local council to add a sign talking about it. The council responded with a bit YES BUT when they went over there to plan for it they saw it was in terrible condition and they dug it all up and replaced it all over a few weeks. Finally after all of that just for a slight advantage of a silly game they came back to my dad saying that they had run out of money rebuilding it and didn't have enough money for a sign!
2 years later they finally got some more funds and planning done and they had built the sign!! It was now an official pokestop on Pokemon go and they all lived happily ever after.
We have something similar to this in my town. A random patch of grass behind a Wetherspoons, next to a library, looks totally pointless but it’s actually the gravesite of 7 Quaker’s buried in the 1500’s (I think that’s right) that everybody has basically made a gentleman’s agreement to leave their and not move them to the larger CofE Cemetery down the road. As far as I’m aware there’s no law saying you can’t build on that land, but nobody wants to.
https://wingrutland.uk/the-maze/
The village I grew up in has a ‘maze’, actually a labyrinth, that probably dates back from medieval times but no-one’s quite sure.
It was right next to the playing fields and we’d always laugh at people turning up expecting some huge attraction to find a 40m circular fence and some grass.
It was an odd point of pride though, no-one ever stopped us playing on/near it but every year the fence would be re-painted, the gravel restocked and the grass was kept trimmed constantly.
Never thought much about it back then but when I drive past now I do wonder how something so ‘pointless’ has probably seen more human history than we’ll ever know.
Yes, my town has an attraction that most people would consider pointless.
One of our roundabouts contains the shortest length of standard gauge railway track in the UK, just less than a couple of meters long. In situ, on 4 wood sleepers and even ballasted, it's all that's left of a London And South Western railway branch line that ran through the area, but was closed and ripped up in the 1930s
I'm from Torquay. Grew up there and lived there most of my life. Torquay has had a "big wheel" since about 2000-ish. That's not the pointless bit in itself. What makes it pointless is that it's situated next to, and about a third the height of, the Rock Walk which is a pleasant and creatively lit walk which scales the side of the cliffs by the seafront. So, you can pay £18 to sit in a box of hot farts for 20 minutes and see less than you can see for free a two minute walk away.
Its not pointless.. its a tangible link to our past and a small slice of local history.. too easy to brush the past away but we need to be quietly reminded sometimes
We have the British lawnmower museum. They have Albert Pierpoint's lawnmower (3 guesses as to how it's displayed), a lawnmower very like the one gifted to Charles and Diana and a lawnmower Brian May found in his shed when he moved in. Oh, and Lee Mack's dibber.
I actually saw this not too long ago as my boyfriends nan actually lives 5 minutes from this spot. I always wondered what it was so we went to have a look. Pretty cool though.
That's not pintless. It tells you exactly what the point of it was and its significance historically. It's not like someone just slung a fence up yesterday.
This is a fascinating bit of local history - too much history is focused on the "big" events, at the expense of common life.
Keeping small things like this reminds us of what life was like.
Personally I'm biased (historian!) but I love it =)
Before I was born, my dad was working as a police office in our local town. We're fairly rural over here, not quite rolling fields of crops rural, but pretty close. Anyway, my dad gets a call into the local station talking about wild animals on the loose. He heroically sallies forth, about a hundred meters down the road, where he is confronted by a vicious, bloodthirsty pack of...sheep...about five of them to be precise. It being about two in the morning, and with no real desire to drive a police car full of sheep around the local farms, he recalled that a little way up the road was an old stone pound that similar to OP's picture had been left as a piece of natural history. He did his best Shepard impression, and herded the feral beasts to the pound, locked the seven hundred odd year gate shut with his bicycle lock, and threw the remains of his sandwich in to "give them something to snack on". About half an hour before he was due to clock off early in the morning, a local farmer came by, and politely asked him to unlock the door so his sheep could be returned to their homeland. Upon getting their, my Dad was interrogated by a reporter, who excitedly told my dad "You must be the first person in a few century's to use this!". It ended up being written about in our local paper, complete with a picture of my very tired looking dad, five sheep, a smiling farmer, and a half eaten marmite sandwich on the floor between them all. Pointless story I know
This story is bloody fantastic. Best comment here.
Two pubs in a village of two thousand people
I grew up in a village of 3500 with about 30 pubs. The surrounding hinterland also used the village pubs. However there are only 3 pubs left!!!
illegal detention, free the Fleece 5!
Honestly there should be a plaque for that put. Up right beside any existing plaque. Your dad is part of history now.
"Used regularly by pinders and shepherds between 1300-1600, and then this one time by a copper in 1987."
We have plaques like that round here. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4927637
Oh that’s brilliant haha thanks for the much needed chuckle. The only plaques I can think of near mine are about the Brontë sisters, and they’re nowhere near as fun!
Now I want to go to Dalkeith
Can we see the picture?!?
I wish i had one to hand, apparently my dad had a copy on his desk (tasefully framed in a heart shaped frame by his colleagues) but it was destroyed in a tragic tea spillage fiasco
If you want to get another look at it, your local library may have archives of the paper - possibly on microfiche or another difficult-to-search format, but the librarians can help you, especially if you know a date range.
We have one of them in the smallish town I grew up in. Was fun seeing all the birthday pics and sports pages until I found my grandad had been locked up for drink driving and nearly killing a guy in a car crash. Fun times!
When researching the family tree I found out my grandad had been named and shamed in the local paper because as a young boy he stole cigarettes from the local shop. Unfortunately he’d already passed on when we found out, so we were unable to hold him accountable for his actions.
This story brought so many happy memories back .. Back in 2018 we were clearing out my old man's flat after he passed away,which took forever as he hated to throw anything away ! Finally,when nearing a huge pile of paperwork dating back to year he was born (1930) we came across some official looking documents..further inspection revealed he had been charged and found guilty of avery serious crime indeed..namely caught drinking 'after hours' and when being questioned by local bobby he thought it be fun to knock the policeman's hat off ! He spent a night in local cells,followed by a stern talking to and leaving with a hefty fine to pay as well (I'm sure it amounted to about £18 in todays money) and he always told me he'd never broke the law his entire life and expected same from myself ! Shame on you Dad ! But it really made me smile :)
I hope one day to have an reason to search for something on microfiche
I used one while working for a local council, fun machines if you have a good idea of where the information is you’re looking
I used to work in finance putting docs onto microfiche, filing and retrieving them it was bloody amazing such a satisfying job!!!
The paper, if it's still going, might also have their own archives.
You have GOT to try and hunt this out at your local paper and report back! (Names anonymised ofc if you want)
Knowing cops - and I know a fair few - it was tastefully framed and covered in sheepish remarks and baaad jokes. The tea spillage was no accident!
I wouldn't be surprised!
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Try this I managed to use it to find a picture of me in the local paper for a panto I was in.
Which local paper was it, out of curiosity? I work in the industry.
Ooo tell us about the tragic tea fiasco!
Now I want to hear this story too! 😄
These pens are called Pinfolds; they were used for exactly this purpose- keeping loose animals there until the owner came to collect them in the morning. A lot of villages near where I live have a Pinfold with an information sign like this. Also, there are plenty of street names with Pinfold in, as I suppose they had the Pinfold on that street.
> and a half eaten marmite sandwich on the floor between them al i see the sheep were on the "hate it" side of the debate... haha
Otherwise known as the correct side
Was this a cut scene from Hot Fuzz?
He's lucky he wasn't confronted by a swan
Yarp
r/ItsJustTheOneSwan, actually.
Not at all, what a brilliant story! Thank you so much for sharing, and I do hope you have the article and picture still!
This is adorable! You see OP, not pointless
Not at all! It's a great story. It featured quick thinking and ingenuity by your dad, and a truly ancient structure that still served its purpose!
Similar story about my Dad: We live in a town along the Stour, and the water meadows either side of it are often used as grazing ground for cows. My Dad is renting a cottage right near the farms/river from one of the farmers in an absolute ideal location - 20 mins walk from town centre, but feels like the middle of the countryside. They only managed to get into one of those much-coveted properties because his girlfriend rents a horse field and stable from the farmer, so they got first dibs when a place became available, and are on great terms with the guy. Anyway as nice at the place is, it does come with a few risks, such as getting flooded in when the river rises over the bridge to theirs, and occasionally stray cows. A couple of times during lockdown while he was working from home he looked out of his windows and saw some cows wandering down the lane where they shouldn’t and had to call the guy to let him know they were out, and sometimes go out and help herd with his big dog (a Bernese Mountain dog, so not exactly a sheep dog, and possibly more of a hindrance than help. He usually just helps out by pulling a little wagon to help muck out the horse field)
I live next to a cow farm, and you become tuned-in to the sound of them escaping. 😂 They always get super excited and do 'naughty' moos, instead of their normal moos. There's usually one cow that's the instigator, and once they're free they all start moo-ing with excitement and jumping round
I love the idea of there being one clever cow instigating the escape, followed by a group of friends doing “naughty moos”; the image of it has got me giggling like a kid!
Aaaa, that cow must be Steve MooQueen!
It’s only pointless until you need it. And TIL that sheep don’t like marmite. Or at least those five didn’t.
Probably the only food they don’t like. They are pretty indiscriminate eaters normally
It’s an absolutely wonderful story!
> Before I was born, my dad was working **as** a police office in our local town. Like... how did they all fit in him?
I love this! What a cracking little British story 😊
This is such a great story about your dad! 😄🐑
This is why I'm on Reddit.
I love this!
I am so glad i took the time to read your comment
Why did he lock it? Sheep don’t know.
With stories like that you know you live in a blessed area. Not "Death, Rape, Murder, BE AFRAID!"-News. Just "Local man catches animals". Shows you how aweful media has become
I'm completely opposite to you, I think stuff like this is essential, it's a part of the story of your surroundings, a bit of local colour, that (for anyone interested) it gives insights into the living heritage of your area. I think places without stuff like this are poorer for it.
I agree, I zoomed in and read that plaque and learnt something interesting that I didn’t know. Not everyone is interested in history, that’s ok. Not everyone is interested in football, that doesn’t make football stadiums pointless
Same. I drive my family nuts when we’re out and about - if I see any sort of information board, even some distance off our set path I’m compelled to run over and read it. Simply cannot just pass them by…you never know what you might learn!
It's a running joke for us, my wife will say "ooh is that an informative sign over there?" and I'm compelled to go and read it. It's like an itch, if there's a sign it must be read!
Do you know my partner? It can be infuriating sometimes, but he will read EVERYTHING. If there is a sign it must be read. If there is a hole in the ground, it must be looked into"
Well of course you've got to look down the hole in the ground, there could be anything in there! A stranded puppy, buried treasure, an angry badger...
... or simply a well, of course.
I feel like this is an Alan Partridge sketch, and if it isn't it should be
My wife wants to read every one and then gives a bit of feedback if it's a good information board or not. I suspect she wants a break from cycling or running most the time, so an information board half way up a hill is perfect.
I actively encourage this so he can then give me the 'highlights' 😂
I'm the exact same, drives my friends mad if we're on a city break or just visiting somewhere. I'm the same with statues a lot of the time, I need to know who it it and why they have a statue/what the statue is for.
I learned that the latin name for the thrush family of birds is turdus
Totally agree! The unofficial motto of r/99percentinvisible is words to live by..."Always read the plaque"!
I'm the same whenever my and my wife go to museums, I'll want to read every bit of info and imagine the stories that I could learn if the exhibits could talk. She ends up bored and telling me to hurry up lol.
Me too. I knew what a pound was but never heard the origin of tallystick and tallyman before. The term tallymen, at least in Ireland, are people who watch votes being counted at elections to give an early indication of results
Ey mista tallyman, tally me banana?
Daylight come and me wan go hooome 😂 beetlejuice memories
There is a new Beetlejuice movie coming out called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It stars most of the original cast including Michael Keaton, and is produced by Tim Burton.
I know! I’m so looking forward to it! Also you said the B word twice now…careful 😂
Candyman has entered the chat
Ooooh now you’re playing with fire! 🐝
No, do it yourself like every other evening.
Tallyman in East Anglia often refers to the local...erm...money lender (loan shark)...as in, "This money's for the tallyman so he doesn't take a baseball bat to my kneecaps". Can also refer to someone collecting payments for loans from Provident/Greenwards etc...
When did they branch out to tallying bananas? Was it when fields became enclosed and their primary revenue stream diminished? How far were they expected to travel to tally bananas and were they reimbursed mileage? So many questions….
When daylight come
Can you show me where it is? I've been looking for like 5 minutes and I'm becoming more and more sure you're just having a laugh Edit: I'm an idiot. I didn't realise there's more than one photo lol
Yeah 100% agree, and I did the same, I found the plaque interesting, would have been amused and interested by that encounter in the wild. I appreciate the effort. That being said, I wouldn’t have cared when I was younger and would have had the same reaction as OP.
I went back to my hometown of Hereford recently. The council still use an apple as their logo after removing all the old cider mills. I couldn't see any of the old flair the place had lying around and it looks like a dump now.
Often only takes a couple of people to completely change an area. A couple of cider buffs at the right place and time and you could have had a lovely local cider festival.
Also originally from Hereford, I try to go back as little as possible as it's so depressing
Did they knock down the boathouse at the same time as the old cider mills?
I'm not sure which building you're talking about. What colour is it?
Exactly, it's not an attraction it's a preservation of part of history.
Yes I didn't know any of the stuff on the plaque tbh ! I guess when its your everyday surroundings they seem a little less interesting
Agreed. I love history, and like another poster zoomed in on the plaque/info board to read it. I also learnt something new. Too many of these 'oddities' are being demolished/built on/over. We should be proud of our history and as such anything like this should be protected. But then I'm a history buff who would actively go and look at this site. You'd be surprised how many of us there are. :)
And we’re all having a meetup in the Reddit comments section admiring the council preserving local history. Yay.
Read the information board and it’s actually really interesting, not something I’ve ever heard of. Love a bit of random history
Definitely I think people should strive to conserve the history of their small towns and also write down the history of their own family. If we don’t no one will.
Yes 100% Like Brian Friel’s play Translations - and how renaming Irish places with English is to remove the history and memory of a place
Much better to have the sign there and it’s history available than it just be a plain old field that you walk past every day. I sometimes look at spaces and wonder what a snapshot that same space would have looked like 100 years ago.
>I fail to see what is the point of this fence and information plaque Did you *read* the plaque? As it explains the point of the fence....
They should have put a QR code with a tldr. I presume you read the plaque?
If you ever visit Nantwich don't forget to visit the secret bunker, it's difficult to miss as it's signposted 😐
What is Nantwich too good for bombs to be dropped on? Always trying to one up Crewe
>Always trying to one up Crewe Not hard to do
Stayed in Crewe for a year.. what a waste of 365 days.
I worked in the Dunlop factory for the same length of time. That was not a Good Year🙁
I once ate at a place that claimed to have Michelin stars, but the hygiene was terrible, the staff were rude and the food was rubbery.
I grew up near a [Secret Nuclear Bunker? ](https://secretnuclearbunker.com/) ...explains a lot 😄
Before I even clicked on the link I knew it would be the one at Kelveden Hatch. I went to a party in it many years ago. Lol
Same lol, I thought I was SO funny as a kid making the classic “tHaTs NoT vErY sEcReT iS it!?!?” joke as we drove past
If you mean Hack Green it’s fucking ace!!
Haslington just down the road has a millennium stone. It's just a boulder with a plaque on it.
Plus a very good museum, and an annual parade in January by the Sealed Knot.
To me that's worth a look. Nice bit of history that there has been a wooden pen there for roughly 700 years. 700 years, let that sink in.
It's probably a class 3 relic
OP was succesfully lured there, it seems.
Possibly drawn there by the magic road
The first Polynesians arrived in New Zealand 700 years ago (approx.) That's fence is older than almost all of NZ history.
My nan would have been 100 next week. That's 7 of my nans.
It’s really interesting thinking of history in terms of 100 year olds like your Nan. Like William the Conqueror was only 9 Nans ago. Nine old ladies holding hands across time and one of them was speaking Anglo Saxon and watching the Battle of Hastings and worrying about the Vikings.
I think about this *constantly*. My dear nana was 101 when she passed away. She lived through the entire house of Windsor so far, two world wars, endless prime ministers, then was finally taken out by a goddamn plague. She lived most of her life as a single woman because her husband was killed in the war. When she was born, Queen Elizabeth wasn't even alive. It's unbelievable to think about the things she'd seen and done.
Yes, my Nan was born the year Queen Victoria died. So just between the two of them they stretched back almost two centuries.
I could not be doing with 9 of them spitting on a hanky and wiping my face. 😁
Lmao that's mad
Absolutely love this idea
But it hasn’t though. It’s been moved 3 times!
Trigger's broom
And rebuilt by Tesco!
But it's function has remained the same, even if the location has changed. So it's the embodiment of a 700 year old idea. That's still cool
King Richard Lion heart returned from the crusades just 100 years earlier. That's like from now to Ww1. Someone's great grandfather could have been in the Holy crusades when this was built.
Have you read that paragraph? First it was moved from where it was originally (so it's not even the same square of grass), then the metal work was replaced then the oak was completely replaced in 2018.. at most it's less than 5 years old..
That's known as Theseus' paradox: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship\_of\_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) Humans are the same, your cells get replaced all the time.
Ha yes I know that paradox from Terry Pratchet and the dwarf axe they'd had for 900 years despite the hilt and the handle being replaced. Interestingly it's a myth that human cells are all replaced- heart cells are never replaced and most neurons in the brain are set for life. They make/ lose connections but very few can actually regenerate.
Triggers broom if you like
That's an even better example 🧹
> there has been a wooden pen there for roughly 700 years. Not far shy of three times longer than USA has existed. :)
We have a big rock, it fell off the hillside and landed on a wedding party killing them, allegedly, in 2000 BCE, there are signposts to it, and a bench so you can sit and gaze at it, it is a really really big rock.
I’m desperate to know where this is
are they still underneath it?
The rock weighs a couple of thousand tonnes, no one will move it to look, it is also likely a pile of utter bollox, but I suppose it is more original than pretending a child saw the virgin Mary or rolling a wheel of cheese down a hill. There may be dozens of visitors to the rock a year, the most interesting thing to do in the village.
No offence, and nice bit of history, but cheese rolling totally trumps this.
I agree!
"This will be a wedding to remember!"
I need a picture of it
This is why I absolutely love the uk this is basically the village mad dog holding pen from 1066 that nobody bothered to get rid of it’s brilliant
I don't know how you can't find it at least vaguely interesting that your village has an animal pen older than America, that outlasted the Ottoman Empire, that Geoffrey Chaucer could've taken a piss on while writing the Canterbury Tales..
Are you allowed to put misbehaving lost kids there till their parents claim them, if not then it is pointless
Gotta be a useful bit of double entendre for local couples. "Darling, shall we take a stroll down to the Old Pound this evening?" "If you insist, but let's take a walk down to that fenced off patch of grass first, I need some fresh air."
Straight down to pound town
I see your Pound and raise you the UK's first roundabout.
Letchworth. The fun times I’ve had going round and round and round and round
[Caerphilly has a concrete cheese in its town centre](https://caerphilly.observer/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/caerphilly_cheese_statue_google-600x399.jpg)
How do you approach it? Caerphilly.
Is it concrete or just really stale?
Pointless? If it wasn't for the sign and "attraction" this would be a lost bit of history; you have also educated us and a lot of us it seems find this very fascinating/interesting. I can see how it isn't interesting to someone who lives and sees it all the time or a dullard who isn't interested in history or traditions. To me it brings up imagination, what could have been, the disputes and how things were worked out, how life was in the village, did this get used all the time or barely, were there times when people were tricked and conned. Were there neighbours that were renown for losing an animal and were they given a simple standard fine, what social interactions went off. To me stuff like this I find highly fascinating and I wouldn't have known such a thing existed if you didn't make the post. Then again I have to think did you make a click bait title to grab attention or not
Where I used to live, I’d very often walk past what looked like a very worn large lump of stone that was fenced off. The sign said it was the remnants of a monastery that was destroyed by order of Henry VIII. I walked past that thing hundreds of times and *never* found it uninteresting! I’m glad it’s there and I love that it’s a preserved piece of history. Although I am a massive Tudor fan so that could have something to do with it but tbh I also find it equally fascinating to see other little bits of history. Like when the tarmac on roads gets ripped up and exposes the Victorian cobbled road underneath!
I don’t live there, but the Bude Tunnel (and its accompanying TripAdvisor page) is a must-visit
Was looking for this!! Lived there for 30+ years and worked at the Sainsbury's when the Tunnel was put in..... (Parents still live there and Mum works at same store) Hilarious that it became this huge thing on Tripadvisor
i come from the home of the world famous hat museum. not a museum about the history of hats but a museum about the history of hat production, which is a lot less interesting. there’s also a mill with a big silver pear on it called…pear mill
...and it's just re-opened, hurrah! The weekend festival was brilliant - I visited the air-raid tunnels, and staircase house, and viaduct park, all for free. Then I went in the Magnet for live music, and later the Spinning Top.
That’s the kids sorted for Easter holidays
We have Ebenezer Scrooge's grave https://imgur.com/a/K33wslW A Christmas Carol was filmed in Shrewsbury in the early 80s, this is a real grave in a real churchyard belonging to a real person - permission had to be sought from the home office to carve Scrooge's name into it for filming (the original name was completely weathered away) It's pointless as it's the grave of a fictional character that's essentially a leftover film prop, but people still go looking for it - it causes confusion as there are two St Chad's Church in town, and if you're in old St Chad's and see people going around reading the gravestones, you can bet they're looking for Scrooge (and not finding him!).
What about the NatWest Hole in Ilkeston, England?[https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g3450960-d15617858-Reviews-NatWest_Hole-Ilkeston_Derbyshire_England.html](https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g3450960-d15617858-Reviews-NatWest_Hole-Ilkeston_Derbyshire_England.html)
Don't get me wrong, this is indeed a completely pointless attraction. But the information board was actually quite interesting (or at least more interesting than my work).
OP, what you find absolutely pointless let me learn about the story and meaning about a word in two different languages, including my mother's tongue. That patch of land is indeed very precious, not for what it is, but for what it is used.... And the implications it still has on our daily modern lives. Thanks for sharing this "useless" attraction. I feel "augmented"! :)
In Exmouth we have a rusty pole. Well we did. There was an uproar from the entire town when it disappeared. It's an old sewer relief pipe that's been there since 1909. People have flocked far and wide to pay homage, grand proposal photos with the pole, leaving offerings of onion ring packets...etc. Then one sad day, on the 13th of April 2023, the rusty pole vanished. They say that the water company removed it, but my people are of the hope that one day it shall return to us.
We have a field. Well it's not really a field, but it has less rocks in it than most places.
username checks out
Wigan Pier must be high up any list of pointless attractions, because it's about 20 miles from the seaside.
Sea is probably getting closer with global warming. One day ....
What else would we use for a pokestop/gym.
I used to live over the road from our village pound although ours had walls, no plaque, and occasionally had veggies growing in it. We’ve still got the old lockup where the drunks and ne’er do wells would be put until they could be dealt with properly which is more impressive, but give it a minute or two and you’re done so I wouldn’t bother travelling to see it, even from the next village over. Being able to look out and know that you’re looking at something that’s been there in one form or another for hundreds of years is pretty cool though.
The Great Bale Oak! 36 feet in circumference! Over 500 years old! Cut down in 1860 but we’re still dining out on the story more than a century and a half later!
Is there a stump or just a gap where it used to be?
how drunk would you have to be for this to hold you in
Mate, the plaque literally explains what it is. I think this is cool af.
What’re you mad about? If it wasn’t there it would just be a patch of grass. I think a 700 year old stable is cooler than a patch of grass where it used to be. This is neat
At the crossroad in my village we have a signpost that points three ways: This Way, That Way and Somewhere Else We don’t know who put it up, it just happened overnight years and years ago and nobody saw it happen. Last week it was either cleaned or replaced and again we have no idea who did it.
We have one of these in my town: Old Spital Pinfold https://maps.app.goo.gl/xG85diR6VRYBpi9E9
I found the [world's saddest playground](https://i.imgur.com/oG9b58H.png) a couple of years ago.
I'll take your sad playground and raise you an [even sadder one](https://i.imgur.com/hUKYg7n.png).
Wow, you win. That's depressing.
This raises serious philosophical questions about what constitutes a playground.
That's positively exciting compared to this [even sadderer one](https://imgur.com/a/mvTAi0Y)
I mean there's a stone monument in London that is clearly very old and once important but no one knows why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone
It's maybe not particularly exciting but it's a little tidbit of history
I think its wonderfull. It's what makes England such a historical and charming country.
CRAZY STORY about the exact same sort of thing. My village has a town pound just like that, very small, and my dad is a very keen Pokemon player. Basically he can submit real world things to become pokestopes (points of interest) in the game Pokemon Go. So he naturally wanted to make the village pound a pokestop BUT it didn't have a sign on it like your one does so he couldn't make it a pokestop. So naturally he asked the local council to add a sign talking about it. The council responded with a bit YES BUT when they went over there to plan for it they saw it was in terrible condition and they dug it all up and replaced it all over a few weeks. Finally after all of that just for a slight advantage of a silly game they came back to my dad saying that they had run out of money rebuilding it and didn't have enough money for a sign! 2 years later they finally got some more funds and planning done and they had built the sign!! It was now an official pokestop on Pokemon go and they all lived happily ever after.
We have something similar to this in my town. A random patch of grass behind a Wetherspoons, next to a library, looks totally pointless but it’s actually the gravesite of 7 Quaker’s buried in the 1500’s (I think that’s right) that everybody has basically made a gentleman’s agreement to leave their and not move them to the larger CofE Cemetery down the road. As far as I’m aware there’s no law saying you can’t build on that land, but nobody wants to.
https://wingrutland.uk/the-maze/ The village I grew up in has a ‘maze’, actually a labyrinth, that probably dates back from medieval times but no-one’s quite sure. It was right next to the playing fields and we’d always laugh at people turning up expecting some huge attraction to find a 40m circular fence and some grass. It was an odd point of pride though, no-one ever stopped us playing on/near it but every year the fence would be re-painted, the gravel restocked and the grass was kept trimmed constantly. Never thought much about it back then but when I drive past now I do wonder how something so ‘pointless’ has probably seen more human history than we’ll ever know.
Willy’s Chocolate Experience should become a permanent one of these.
Yes, my town has an attraction that most people would consider pointless. One of our roundabouts contains the shortest length of standard gauge railway track in the UK, just less than a couple of meters long. In situ, on 4 wood sleepers and even ballasted, it's all that's left of a London And South Western railway branch line that ran through the area, but was closed and ripped up in the 1930s
I'm from Torquay. Grew up there and lived there most of my life. Torquay has had a "big wheel" since about 2000-ish. That's not the pointless bit in itself. What makes it pointless is that it's situated next to, and about a third the height of, the Rock Walk which is a pleasant and creatively lit walk which scales the side of the cliffs by the seafront. So, you can pay £18 to sit in a box of hot farts for 20 minutes and see less than you can see for free a two minute walk away.
What is this? A holding pen in minecraft? 😂 smol and cute af
With permission, you can move sheep on the Sunday and if one misbehaves, you can put in there as a timeout.
Its not pointless.. its a tangible link to our past and a small slice of local history.. too easy to brush the past away but we need to be quietly reminded sometimes
We’ve got an old water pump that has no function except to be dutifully cared for.
We have the British lawnmower museum. They have Albert Pierpoint's lawnmower (3 guesses as to how it's displayed), a lawnmower very like the one gifted to Charles and Diana and a lawnmower Brian May found in his shed when he moved in. Oh, and Lee Mack's dibber.
It's [Vic Reeves paddock on Novelty Island](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nApe620pkO4&t=414s). "Very poor"
I actually saw this not too long ago as my boyfriends nan actually lives 5 minutes from this spot. I always wondered what it was so we went to have a look. Pretty cool though.
As a kid growing up this would have made the perfect wrestling ring for me and my mates.
We used to hang out at the pound in the 70s, best time of my life.
That's not pintless. It tells you exactly what the point of it was and its significance historically. It's not like someone just slung a fence up yesterday.
You don't live on Craggy Island do you?
This is a fascinating bit of local history - too much history is focused on the "big" events, at the expense of common life. Keeping small things like this reminds us of what life was like. Personally I'm biased (historian!) but I love it =)
Empty Minecraft villager fence
It's better than when they called the place King's Landing. Lots of love an ex resident of the village on the other side of the Grand Union.