The A30, at two hundred and eighty-four miles, is the third longest ‘A’ road in Britain. It’s too long, and too interesting to fit into one post, so this is the first of two, covering the history of the road up to the end of the seventeenth century.
Setting Off
The lure of the South-West!
Off to Cornwall!
But how do I get there?
For many centuries, people used some version of the London to Land’s End Road, which, in 1923, was made the A30, with a touch of A315 through London.
Finding the Road
Today, though, punch “London to Land’s End” into your ‘satnav’ and you’re offered the M4 to Bristol, then the M5 to Exeter. Alternatively, you might try the M4, M25, M3, to join the A303 west of Basingstoke. Again you are delivered to Exeter, and Honiton, some twenty miles north. On the other hand, you might stick to the M3 past Southampton, then the A31 and A35, to arrive at Honiton, which would take you about an hour longer.
“Just a moment,” you might say, “what happened to the A30?”
Well, once you reach Honiton, you are definitely on the A30, and you’re away. Apart from a brief flirtation with the M5 round Exeter, it’s A30 dual carriageway past Launceston and Bodmin, to the far side of the Camborne Bypass. Then you find you’re on a two-way road, past Hayle, to Penzance. After that, the A30 takes on a more country-road feel as you carry on to Land’s End.
At a first glance at a map, the A30 seems to disappear somewhere beyond Basingstoke, until Honiton. It is there, of course, though often bashful, and tucked away.
The London End of the A30
Today, theA30 starts on the western edge of London.
At Henly’s Roundabout, on the A4, a bit before Heathrow, take the exit, for ‘Heathrow (Terminal 4 & Cargo)’, and ‘Staines, A30’, and, there you are, you’re on it. It’s ‘The Great South-West Road’, but for only the three miles to the Clockhouse roundabout, though, up to the nineteenth century, it was the name for the entire road.
In fact, the London to Land’s End Road never set off from where today’s A30 branches off the A4. It started, and still does at Hyde Park Corner.
William Morgan’s Map, The whole of London, 1682, shows The Road to Exeter Etc. running off from the west end of Piccadilly, through what was then Portugal Street.
It kept going west through Knightsbridge, Kensington, Hammersmith and Chiswick.
Somewhere between Turnham Green station and Kew Bridge Road, it picks up the line of a Roman road coming in from Marble Arch.
The 1923 MoT map shows the A30 running straight on from the A315, at a crossroads where ‘The Clockhouse Roundabout’ is now.
Strictly speaking, it went against one of the tenants of the system, that roads should keep their number throughout their length. On the map above, you can clearly see, it’s the same road.
In 1923, the stretch of road between Henly’s Roundabout and the Clockhouse Roundabout didn’t exist. But on the MoT map, it’s shown as a dotted line, suggesting the planners already had plans (they do that), and weren’t going to leave things alone, which they didn’t.
A Roman Road to Isca Dumnoniorum
Naturally, the Romans had to get in on the act. Exeter, which the Romans knew as Isca Dumnoniorum, was an important naval town, so they had a road to it.
Not much is the A30, but this first bit from Kew, over Hounslow Heath to Staines, then on to a little north of Sunningdale, runs along the route of what later became known as The Devil’s Highway.
After Sunningdale, the Romans took a cross-country route to Silchester, (Calleva Atrebatum to them) a village about six miles north of Basingstoke. The next bit of the Roman Road, now called The Port Way, went to Andover, then to the Iron Age hillfort of Old Sarum, outside Salisbury.
It is thought there may have been a Roman town called Sorviodunum within the ring of the older fort, but the archaeological evidence remains sketchy. The A30 may follow The Port Way for a few miles from Lopcombe Corner towards Salisbury, which, of course, wouldn’t be there for another thousand years.
Where the Romans took their road next has nothing to do with the A30. They went off to Dorchester, then roughly along the line of today’s A35 to Honiton, from where the A30 more or less follows the Roman road into Exeter.
Roman Roads Further West
Received wisdom has it, the Romans didn’t venture much beyond Exeter. However, modern technology, and sophisticated geographic techniques, have produced evidence of them carrying on. There was a Roman fort at Okehampton, very much A30, though, it looks as though an important road hub was centred on North Tawton, a village about six miles to the north-east. It all suggests there was a road, not quite the A30, but heading in the right direction.
A road must have carried on from there because there was a fort at Nanstallon, about a mile west of the A389, which was the A30, until the bypass arrived. There was a second Roman fort at Restormel Castle, about four miles south-east of Bodmin. It now seems there was an extensive network of pre-Roman tracks, Roman military roads, and, later, non-military roads running through Devon and Cornwall. They appear to have been developed to allow animal drawn vehicles to move around the area, avoiding flood-prone areas.1
During improvements to the A30 north of Redruth, archaeologists uncovered a section of ancient road, with ditches either side, which lined up with part of the present A30. It is thought to be Roman, if not earlier.2
Of course, we can’t necessarily say, because we have evidence of small sections of road, that the Romans had a precursor to the A30 running through Cornwall. But, Cornwall had been known for tin production from, at least, the Bronze Age. Tin ingots from south-west Briton have been discovered in a shipwreck off the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, and three more off the coast of Israel.3 Finding British tin in the eastern Mediterranean strongly suggests that Phonetician traders were visiting the shores of Cornwall and Devon at least two centuries before the Romans arrived. I can’t imagine the commercially minded Romans would not have exploited such resources, even if the demand for tin to make bronze had dropped.
Evidence for the A30 from the Middle Ages
Yes, the Romans were about, but weren’t they everywhere?
After they went, though, evidence of a would be A30 pretty much disappears for about a thousand years. It’s true that places along the road, Bodmin, Launceston, Yeovil, Shaftesbury and Basingstoke developed through the Saxon period, but even after the Normans came, we have no clear record of the roads which may have connected them. Exeter had had a cathedral from 1050, and people would have travelled to and from it, perhaps along parts of the furture A30, but if they did, they don’t tell us about it.
We have to wait for the Gough Map, probably made at the end of the fourteenth century, for the next clue to the road.
The outline of the A30 is there. What’s more, from, Launceston we see a red line, to Exeter, Honiton, and on to Chard, which we can take to be a road. It continued through Shaftesbury, as far as Salisbury. After that, though, the line goes to Winchester, and on to Kingston, via Farnham and Guildford. Much more A3 than A30.
However, all is not lost, because Basingstoke, Bagshot and Brentford can be found, each in its correct relative position. It’s not clear why lines suggesting roads are sometimes drawn, and sometime not. Generally though, it’s accepted that if there are places, in the right order, we can assume there was a road.
From about the same period, though possibly earlier, one of the itineraries from the Cannons of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Titchfield in Hampshire gives us the A30 route from Salisbury to Exeter. The cannons set off from Titchfield, north-west of Portsmouth, to go through Romsey to reach Salisbury. From Exeter, they went to Torre Abbey in Torquay,4 so it seems there was an established road, our A30, between Salisbury and Exeter by the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had probably been there much earlier.
Henry VIII on the Land’s End Road
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn used part of the road during their 1535 progress. (The one which included the consequential visit to Wolf Hall.) They worked their way down to Portsmouth, and then took their time on their way back, staying at grand houses in Hampshire. Eventually, they arrived in Salisbury, and probably took an A30 route to reach at Hurstbourne Priors, east of Andover, on the B3400, which was the A30 in 1923. The party went on to stay at The Vyne, a particularly grand house north of Basingstoke. A few days later, they travelled south, five miles, to Basing House, of which we will hear more later. They stuck to the A30 for a bit, as their next stop was at Elvetham House, which is in Hartley Wintney, between Basingstoke and Camberley. That was it for theA30, because they then swung north to stay at Easthamstead House, near Bracknell.5
Two More On the Road in Tudor Times
It was Henry who set John Leland ferreting around the place. His Itineraries, published long after his death, tell of his 1542 trip to the West Country. He records taking the A315 Roman Road through Brentford, and Hounslow. After that, he heads for Slough, going by Longford, which is, now, on the north-west corner of the airport.
It sets the pattern for the whole trip, which is not very illuminating so far as the A30 is concerned. Yes, he went to many of the places along the road, but often followed rivers. He speaks of the highway to London between Honiton and Exeter, so that is definitely A30.6 When he reached Cornwall, he visited Launceston, Bodmin, Redruth, and Penzance, but he doesn’t follow the A30. In his habitual way, he dotted about, checking on what was to be found in the county’s religious houses.
Holinshed does give us what looks very like the A30 of 1923, as far as Bodmin, after which he goes off to Truro.
The Civil War Along the Road
Given this road was one of the main routes from the Royalist West Country to Parliamentary London, it was bound to see action, and so it did, more or less from the start.
There was an early skirmish, known as the Battle of Babylon Hill, in September 1642. Sir Ralph Hopton had brought a party of Royalist troops to Babylon Hill, on the A30, east of Yeovil. Parliamentary troops mounted a surprise attack, but didn’t push home their advantage, and the Royalists escaped with the loss of about twenty men.
The Battle of Turnham Green
At the London end of the road, there was a more significant, if unresolved, confrontation along the A30/A315.
In the Autumn of 1642, Prince Rupert of the Rhine rode out from Oxford, taking a number of towns, including Maidenhead. From there they travelled along the Bath road, and the A3006, once part of the A4, to set up camp on Hounslow Heath.
Parliament agreed to negotiations, but while they were going on, the King ordered Prince Rupert to clear the Parliamentary forces out of Brentford, which he did, sacking the town for good measure. In response, the Earl of Essex brought a Parliamentary force to Turnham Green, blocking the road to the capital.
Throughout Sunday, November 13th, the two armies faced each other. There was sporadic artillery fire and the odd skirmish, but neither side advanced. That night, under the cover of darkness, the Royalists fell back to Hounslow Heath.7 From there they crossed the Thames at Kingston Bridge, eventually withdrawing to Oxford. The Battle of Turnham Green was more of a stand-off than a battle, but it was the one and only time Charles attempted to take London.
Skirmish at Sourton Down
Along the road in Devon, there was a skirmish, in April 1643, at Sourton Down, about four miles south-west of Okehampton. The action was emblematic of the indecisive engagements during the early part of the war. Major-General Sir James Chudleigh led Parliamentary forces from Okehampton, along the line of the B3260, once the A30, in an attempt to enter Cornwall. A troop of Royalists, command by Sir Ralph Hopton, marched across the downs to intercept him. Chudleigh got wind of the approaching column, and used his cavalry to mount an ambush.
Hopton’s Royalists regrouped on the higher ground, where they could fire down on the enemy infantry. A fierce thunderstorm started, so it was raining and pitch-black, but the royalists continued to fire by aiming at the glow of the Parliamentary force’s musket fuses.
When Chudleigh realised what was happening, he sent orders that his men should hang their fuses on bushes, and retreat. So, the Royalists stood, all night, on the edge of a windy and rain-swept Dartmoor, firing into the foliage.
The West Country remained a stronghold for the king until Parliamentary forces took Launceston and Bodmin in early 1646. Hopton finally surrendered in March of that year.
The Sieges of Basing House 1643-45
As well as set-piece battles, and bloody skirmishes, sieges were a feature of the war.
Basing House, south-east of Basingstoke, which we met before, when Henry VIII stayed there, was attacked, in November 1643, by a force of seven-thousand Parliamentary soldiers.
The house was owned by John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, a Roman Catholic, and committed Royalist. Parliament wanted him out. That first attack failed, so in June of the following year, Parliamentary troops began a second siege, which was broken by Royalist forces in September. In the end, Oliver Cromwell, himself, led the assault that took the house in October 1645. Perhaps because of the high casualty rate among Parliamentary soldiers, Paulet’s Catholicism, and Catholic priests being found hiding in the house, the reprisals were unusually savage, but Paulet was not killed. The house was a casualty, though, as Parliament ordered it to be pulled down.
Two Late Seventeenth Century Travellers
The war, and Britain’s experiment with republicanism, eventually ended, and from Charles II’s reign comes John Ogilby’s Britannia, with four plates covering The Road from London to The Land’s End in Cornwall.
Quite a bit of his road he gives is the A30 to Exeter. He follows the 1923 route as far as Chard, but then, for some unknown reason, his map takes us to Axminster, and along the line of today’s A35 to reach Honiton. Beyond Exeter, though he avoids the A30 almost entirely.
The other great traveller from the final years of the seventeenth century was Celia Fiennes, on her side-saddle. From the point of view of the A30 she’s no more help than John Ogilby. She goes somewhere she calls “Rusbery, 19 miles by Stanes.“[sic.] After that, she’s off to Uxbridge. She does visit places along the A30, but assiduously avoids actually using the road. The sole exception is when heading back towards London, she went to Honiton “15 mile, all fine Gravell way, ye best Road I have met with all in the west.” [sic.]8 That bit of old Roman road, from Exeter to Honiton, seems to be the most consistently used stretch along the whole A30.
So we see, at the dawn of the eighteenth century there was a road, which had the potential to become the A30, but it wasn’t quite there. In the next post, we will look at what happened to it next.
- Parcero-Oubiña, César, Smart, Chris, and Fonte, João, 2023, Remote Sensing and GIS Modelling of Roman Roads in South West Britain, Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology Volume 6-1 ↩︎
- Cornwall Council, 2024, 10,000 years of Cornish history uncovered during A30 improvement works, https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-news/environment-culture-and-planning/10-000-years-of-cornish-history-uncovered-during-a30-improvement-works/] ↩︎
- Roberts, Benjamin and Williams, Alan, 2025. Bronze-age Britain traded tin with the Mediterranean, shows new study – settling a two-century debate, Durham University, https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2025/05/bronze-age-britain-traded-tin-with-the-mediterranean-shows-new-study–settling-a-two-century-debate/ ↩︎
- Dickins, L, 1938. Premonstratensian Itineraries from a Titchfield Abbey MS. at Welbeck Proceedings, Leeds Philosophical Soc., 349-61. ↩︎
- Holinshed, Mark, The 1535 Royal Progress When Seymour and Cromwell Trounced de Boulogne, Henry VIII the Reign – the Blog, https://www.henryviiithereign.co.uk/royal-progress-of-1535.html ↩︎
- Smith, Lucy, Toulmin, 1909. The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the years 1535 – 1543, George Bell and Sons, London ↩︎
- Plant, David, 2009(a). Brentford and Turnham Green: November 1642, B C W Project Website, http://bcw-project.org/military/english-civil-war/edgehill-campaign/brentford-turnham-green ↩︎
- Fiennes, Celia, 1888. Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary, Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, E.C. ↩︎