No jostling!

We had a talk the other day about the history of the town from a local man, a retired construction engineer, with a good eye for detail. He took us through the highs and lows of the last few centuries and deplored the way cars have clogged the streets. The town was built for horses and carts he said and to illustrate this he showed us pictures like these. This little street, Parc y Shwt, leads through to  a.... car park  but  was once a field (parc in Pembrokeshire Welsh via the Norman colonisers).

The two big stones you see on either side of the junction of the little street with High Street were put there long ago to stop cart wheels catching the corners of the  houses and potentially damaging both. The extra shows similar stones at the junction of an alley nearby. 
Technically they are known as guard stones or jostle stones.*

I must have seen these stones a thousand times in passing  but never 'noticed' them. And yet, during a very short stay in Warsaw a few years ago (never blipped, I should do that) I often  stopped to admire the much fancier versions that protected the corners of every courtyard entrance along the old streets. How blind to the familiar can we be?

If you live in an old town do look out for these. They are freighted with historical significance and deserve protection.

Wikipedia: guard stones

 * Jostle is a verb now used mostly in an interpersonal context but it seems originally to have had a more general meaning of things bumping into each other. It has the same root as joust from the Latin juxta, next to.