"Perambulating the Bounds"

Town Boundaries and Their Deep Roots, From the Age of Alfred the Great to 21st century New England

      If you’ve lived for any length of time in New England, you’ve seen them, very likely in passing — standing stones on a rural road, quiet and unobtrusive, marked with differing capital letters on opposite sides, marking the boundaries between Towns.

( Boundary marker between Kingston, left, and Plympton, to the right, on Ring Road; credit — J. Benjamin Cronin )

    These boundary markers delineate the formal bounds, or borders, of the Town, and while oft overlooked, represent a tangible and enduring link with the pre-modern, quasi-medieval world of the 17th century English colonists. That “world we have lost,” in the words of historian Peter Laslett, nevertheless retains important and lasting — and in significant ways, legal — resonances in 21st century New England.