12 April 2015

The skills of those who carved guide-stoops varied enormously, as these pictures show.

I have just (Jan 2021) discovered that the technical term for a pointing hand is a manicule, although the word is not in most dictionaries, or even the OED online.  This is from a fascinating book on London street signs by Alistair Hall (Batsford, 2020).

Not a standard guide-stoop, this classical structure of 1805, recently restored, is at Ackworth: designed for the traveller on horse-back.		A very elaborate sleeved hand on a stoop on Lindley Moor Road in Huddersfield (1735).		A rather more primitive hand – at the junction of the B6118 and the road between Kirkheaton and Mirfield.
A nicely-carved hand at Sowerby Bridge.		Looks like an afterthought, perhaps by an apprentice who didn’t know what a hand was: at Stone Chair near Shelf; erected 1737.		Two different hand styles on the listed stoop at Farnley Moor End, near Thurstonland (1738).