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The same three-pronged arrow cut into British stone, meaning a height or an owner.
Look for the horizontal bar. An Ordnance Survey benchmark is a broad arrow with a short horizontal bar cut above it, and the bar is the point: it is where a levelling staff was rested and a height above the national datum recorded. A broad arrow without the bar marks British government or Crown property. The bar weathers away faster than the arrow does, which is why so many surviving benchmarks are reported as government marks.
Both are three-pronged arrows cut into British stonework.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Ordnance Survey benchmark | Broad arrow |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | arrows, lines and dots | arrows and triangles |
| Ordnance Survey benchmark | Broad arrow | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Arrow with a horizontal bar above it | Arrow alone |
| Means | A published height above the national datum | Government or Crown property |
| Found on | Walls, bridges, church plinths | Military stores, tools, timber, blankets and equipment |
| Still maintained | No — superseded by satellite positioning | Its use is much reduced but the mark is not obsolete |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Broad arrow — Both are three-pronged arrows cut into British stonework. | Commonly confused with Ordnance Survey benchmark — The benchmark is the same arrow with a horizontal bar above it. |
Ordnance Survey map symbols and legends
Ordnance Survey · retrieved 2026-08-01
The national mapping agency's own published legend. Authoritative for British Ordnance Survey mapping and for nothing else — the same drawing may carry a different meaning on another country's maps, and every record citing this states its jurisdiction.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-22
Tertiary reference, cited for the conventional description of a mark, its usual name and where it is encountered. Where an issuing body defines the mark, that body is cited alongside and governs.
Look for the horizontal line. Fire is a plain upward triangle; air is the same triangle with a bar drawn across its upper part. Dropping the bar is the commonest error in reproductions of the element set, and it turns air into fire.
The same rule as fire and air, inverted. Water is a plain downward triangle; earth is the same triangle with a bar across its lower part. The four element signs are one designed set: two point up, two point down, and within each pair the bar is the only difference.
The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, still visible in some italic forms where the e and the t can be picked out. The Tironian et is a separate mark descending from a Roman shorthand, shaped like a small seven, and it is in daily public use in Ireland as the written form of 'agus'. A reader who knows only the ampersand takes the other for a numeral, which on a bilingual road sign produces a confidently wrong place name.
A dram is three scruples. On the page the two symbols are built from the same looped stroke and differ in where a second stroke crosses it, so a hurried hand or a poor copy could turn one into the other and a threefold dosing error with it. Both are obsolete in dispensing, replaced by metric units during the twentieth century, and this pair is the clearest argument for why.