Guardacantón, stone poles that served to protect the corners of the buildings from the carriages. The guardacantones were placed to the sides of the walks and ways so that the carriages did not leave them. Formerly, they were used in the corners of the streets and made of hard stone in rounded form, having used for this object Roman miliary stones or old canyons with the butt up. This ancient custom was preserved until the use of sidewalks became widespread in modern villages. Old houses with guardacantones are still seen at the entrance of their large doors.

The guardrails could be decorated with balls or caracoleos and some had their two embedments in a given placed in the ground in order to avoid that the shocks of the wheels produced shakes in the building. Occasionally, enclosures were built with guardacantones linked by iron chains to preserve some building or monument approaching the carriages. In this case, in which it would be more proper to call them pillars or marmolejos, they were made, either of stone or marble, with built-in rings or rings of iron or all of it of the same cast metal.

The content of this article incorporates material from the Hispano-American Encyclopedic Dictionary of the year 1892, which is in the public domain

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