mounting blocks

Posted by b-unicycling on 29 November 2025 in English.

As usual, I don’t remember what site got me interested in the topic, but here we are anyways.

What are mounting blocks?

They are raised platforms or sometimes even flights of several steps used to mount and dismount horses, carriages, and I believe maybe also to load luggage onto the roof of a carriage. This helps short people or people with other physical restrictions (back in the day women trying to ride their horses side saddle in dresses) to enjoy horse riding. In the UK, for example, they are protected structures. In Ireland, they are not, and I have not searched further than that.

Where can I find mounting blocks?

I looked at over 200 photographs of (mostly) historic mounting blocks in the UK on Wikimedia, categorised a lot of them and followed up on locations provided on Wikidata for the protected ones using street-level imagery. In the UK, they can be found outside graveyards where people left their horses while visiting churches and graves. There are two recorded on the Wikiverse at schools, one secondary boarding school and one primary school. (They probably had them at universities as well - well worth having a closer look next time you visit an old one.) Others can be found outside pubs and former inns, especially the rather tall ones for use with carriages. They can also still be found at manor houses and castles where people live(d) who could afford horses and carriages and who also partook in the hunt - a friend of mine who used to hunt has one on her property in County Kilkenny. Those historic ones are usually made of stone, some looking very unassuming. In some cases, especially in the East Riding of Yorkshire, they are combinations of milestones and mounting blocks with the milestone part being a cast iron plaque fixed onto the usually two-step mounting block.

Modern ones can be found at places that provide horse riding facilities, like riding schools. In the UK, they are also common along bridleways where a motorway bridge needs to be crossed and it is safer to dismount and lead the horse over the bridge. These are usually made from timber or plastic.

`man_made` or `amenity`?

In 2019, there was an unfinished proposal process for mapping mounting blocks with a vote which resulted in 12 votes for man_made and only one for amenity (all other options received no “approve” votes - historic was not even an option in the vote). However, valid points were already made for the amenity key there.

Reading through the arguments, it is my impression that voters were not informed enough about the numbers of mounting blocks, their historical significance and their current use.

Here is my take: Comparing the past and present use cases of mounting blocks, they seem as much as an amenity as bicycle parking or benches. Amenities in general (recycling containers etc etc) are for a specific, often temporary need. Man made structures however are “working in the background”. Street cabinets, manhole covers etc, could all be considered street furniture (like mounting blocks), but they fulfill their purpose all the time. Only people with a professional interest (electricians, sewage workers) will interact with them, whereas amenities are used by private individuals in a private (manor house) or public space to serve their specific, often very temporary need. And I believe that mounting blocks fall into that category. If they were only a thing of the past, we could dodge that discussion and only use historic like we do with milestones, but since they are still in use, we can only add https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:historic=mounting_block to those listed on heritage databases or otherwise (if the local government does not consider them heritage) use our own digression to tag them thus. I have therefore compiled a wiki page for https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=mounting_block and used that tag for all those I mapped (164 so far - overpass).

I’m still working on a video about them which will use the amenity and historic keys.

Want to map some?

There were a few that are listed on Wikidata, but I could not find them on street-level imagery, so if any of the locals in the UK want to give it a try, this is the list.