Picket Post

Picket Post is located on the A31 dual carriageway which passes through the New Forest. It is situated 2.5 miles from the A338 at Ringwood and 8 miles from Junction 1 of the M27 at Cadnam.^[1] A minor road to the village of Burley joins with the A31 at Picket Post. There is a roadside service area on both sides of the dual carriageway.

Picket Post is the location of a cricket ground for Ellingham cricket club, and there is a rugby training pitch next to it.^[2]

Picket Post was once an important junction of the toll road to Poole with the road to Burley and Lymington.^[3] The name derives from a picket (i.e. a post) which marked the spot, but it may have acquired a second meaning from a picket of soldiers stationed at a strategic point on the smugglers's route.^[3] There was an inn here for most of the 19th century, which around 1900 became a tea house whose sign was a large golden kettle - it was demolished in 1969.^[3]