sea benchmarks

[Anonymous]

Can anybody tell me more about the marks carved into a couple of bricks at the front of my 17th cent. south norfolk house please. I think they may be to do with sea level. The is one horizontal line with 3 lines under coming down at different angles.Sorry difficult to explain.

 

[Anonymous]

Do they look like this - only without the middle one being an exclamation mark?

__

/!

 

[CHRIS]

What you have is called a Benchmark (crowsfoot) the Horiz line is a known level above see level (Newlyn in Cornwall is the 0 of main land UK), How old is you house? as they were usua;ly put on buildings near railways or canals back in Victorian days.

The OS used to have a list of all the Benchmarks in the UK but they are now moving away from TRig pillars or bench marks with the advent of GPS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(surveying)

hope this answers your question