What is the test for interpretation of the words “to be construed in one sense only” in the words of a statute?

In Stokes v. Grissell, 23 L.J.C.P. 141, which is a case involving the measurement of distances, Maule, J., at p. 143, uses the following language: “The words are quite unambiguous and to be construed in one sense only. That rule of interpretation is subject to this, that if that one sense would lead to some manifest inconvenience, then some other sense must be looked for because we are to presume that what is manifest would have been seen by those who drew the enactment.”