Tag: British Road History

  • A10 Part 3: Cambridge to King’s Lynn

    A10 Part 3: Cambridge to King’s Lynn

    Here is the third part of the history along the A10, covering the road between Cambridge and King’s Lynn. It takes us to Ely, with one of the country’s most beautiful cathedrals, then across The Fens to Downham Market and King’s Lynn.

    Picking up the Road

    The roads taking the A10 round Cambridge

    At the end of the previous post, we saw that the A10, once the Cambridge Road, no longer goes through the city, instead, you are directed to head north on the M11. At the Girton Interchange, where the M11 finishes, you are signed to join the A14, eastbound. You come off the A14 at Junction 33, signed, A10 for Ely, Cambridge, and Milton.
    In the meantime, the original route of the A10 through the city is, not quite, the A1134, becoming the A1309 about a mile and a half before it reaches the A14.

    The Roman Road Heading North.

    The Roman road heading north of Cambridge.
    The dotted line is speculative, the solid one more certain.

    The Romans called their fort and settlement around Castle Mound in Cambridge, Duroliponte or Durolipons. A Roman, setting off north from there, would follow Akeman Street, a road coming up from Ermine Street, a few miles north of Royston.
    The first part of the journey, by where today’s Science park sits, is only an educated guess. More certain is, just the other side of the A14, our Roman would have gone along Mere Way, now a footpath west of Milton. That led to a minor road, with the give away name of Akeman Street. Our traveller passed, what today is, the village of Landbeach, where there was a Romano-British settlement from at least the second century, if not before. Akeman Street continued north, until, to the west of Waterbeach, it settled to the line of our A10.1

    The likely line of Akeman Street through Stretham to Littleport.
    The rivers a shown following their modern courses. The Great Ouse, beyond Ely has been much straightened, and in Roman times did not flow int to the sea past King’s Lynn.

    Now, the roving Roman begins to find the way damper. In places the road is built up above the water level. Both sides, there’s an expanse of open water, and marsh, dotted with small islands.
    Next, our traveller must wait for the ferry to take him across the river, we know as the Great Ouse. The road climbs slightly, past Stretham, and it’s generally dryer underfoot. N0 Ely, which would not exist for several hundred years.
    After a while the road dips again, zigzag to find dryer ground, before a gentle upslope into what we know as Littleport. Why would a Roman from Duroliponte travel there? There is evidence of a least one high-status house, and the working of salt pans on the brackish fen edge, but not much else.2

    The End of the Road

    The Fens landscape, not empty in the Roman period, but not much of interest for them

    Where next? Some want to think Akeman Street pushed on to Denver, just south of Downham Market, to meet the causeway coming from Peterborough, but there is no evidence it ever happened. Had the Romans wanted to build a causeway across the fens, they could have, but there was nothing for them. They already had two roads to the North Norfolk coast, Icknield Street and Peddars Way.
    Of course, people had lived in The Fens from the earliest times, fishing and fowling, as well as grazing cattle on higher ground, through the sprig and summer, and even growing some grain.3

    After the Romans

    Anglo-Saxon Homelands and Settlements.
    Source: The Colecter Website, https://www.thecollector.com/genetic-studies-anglo-saxon-migration/

    The Romans, when they abandoned Britain, early in the fifth century, bequeathed us a road which would develop to be theA10 between Cambridge and Littleport.
    Though much debated, genetic research supports the idea that there followed a substantial migration of Germanic peoples into the east and south of England. We call these settlers, and this era, Anglo-Saxon.4
    Centuries passed where we have no direct evidence of what happened to the road. We can, though, trace the arrival of some of the towns and villages found along it.

    Anglo-Saxon Settlements from Milton to Ely

    There are records of land exchanges in Milton from the 970s.5 Two people, considered important, Oswi and Oschetel are mentioned in the Liber Eliensis, as living in Landbeach, in the middle of the tenth centenary.6
    I can’t find any pre-Norman documents relating to Waterbeach, though a settlement had existed since Roman time, as had the hamlet of Chittering but again, no Anglo-Saxon records.
    There is however a record of Abbot Brythnoth, the first abbot of the restored Ely monastery, buying land at Stretham, between 970 and 996. I assume, therefore there was an estate at Stretham from at least the middle of the tenth century.

    For the Isle of Ely we have extensive records going back to the seventh century.
    King Æthelberht of Kent had a church built there, a mile from today’s cathedral. Seventy years later, St. Æthelthryth, usually known as St. Etheldreda, fled to the Island from her unhappy marriage. (Marriage was a problem for her, as she had vowed never to relinquish her virginity.) She owned land in the area, where she founded a double monastery for men and women. The Danes destroyed that, in 870. A hundred years later it was re-founded as a Benedictine monastery, for men only. It became a Catherdral in 1109.

    From Littleport Across The Fens

    King Canute

    We can’t know the state of the road running north out of Ely, but the settlements we find along the A10 were mostly in place by the end of the tenth century.
    The legend that King Canute, (1016 – 1035) founded Littleport is a good story, but unlikely. Littleport is mentioned much earlier, as part of the endowment from King Edgar, (959 –975) to the re-established Ely Monastery.7 There is no record of a church at Littleport, which suggests there was not a significant community there. It would have been a stopping off place for ships, travelling between Cambridge and the Wash, to load salt and fish.

    King Edmund I of England (939 -946

    Still no road to Southery, though there was a Southery (Suthereye) by 942, for it appears in a land grant made by King Edmund I, in 942, to Bishop Theodred, of London.8
    You’d have to go across open water, once more, to reach Hilgay. The holding there was given to Ramsey Abbey, by Duke Ailwyn (Æthelwine) the Ealdorman of East Anglia, some time after 969, when the Abbey was founded. 9 The grant included Snore, and a nearby mill, plus a half share in the fisheries.

    Downham Market to King’s Lynn

    King Edmund I, of England (939 – 946)

    Downham Market grew up because it was always safely above The Fens, as was Denver, immediately to the south. It is possible a road, of sorts, developed between them, but of course, there is no record.
    We first hear of Downham Market during King Edgar’s reign (959 – 975) when he granted it to Ramsey Abbey. The town claims to have one of the oldest markets in Norfolk, run by the Abbey under a 1046 charter from Edward the Confessor. However, it seems likely the charter was a forgery dating from Henry I’s time.10 There may have been a market from the early eleventh century, and the Abbey were covering their backs when the Normans realised they were running it without authorisation.

    Mudflats and winding river courses running into The Wash

    In Saxon tines, the landscape around the south-east corner of The Wash was made up of mudflats, creeks, and salt-water lagoons with the Rivers Nar and Gaywood winding their way through to the sea. (Remember the Great Ouse still reached The Wash further west.) This area, which would become King’s Lynn, supported a scattered population living off salt production and fishing, alongside some subsistence farming.11 There is no evidence of anything resembling a village, and no record of a church, though the landowners included the Bishop of Elmham. (North Elmham was the centre of the dioceses until 1070.)
    And the road? We simply don’t know. There were at least two villages along the line of the original A10, north of Downham. If there was a market at Downham before the Normans came, people from these settlements would have wanted to go there. I doubt there was anything heading towards King’s Lynn. There was nothing to go there for.

    The Normans: Hereward the Wake

    In 1970-71, William the Conqueror was trying to deal with Hereward the Wake, who was holed up on the Isle of Ely. Around this time a causeway was built from the island’s southern edge, running south across the fens. It started at Aldreth, a hamlet which was mostly on dry land, and gave us the name Aldreth Causeway.
    We don’t know if it was an existing route, or was made by William in his endeavours to suppress the Saxon ‘terrorists’. Whatever its origins, from the eleventh century the preferred way to get from Cambridge to Ely, was not along Akeman Street. Instead people went through Histon to Cottenham and then onto the Aldreth Causeway. From there, they went through Haddingham and Witchford to reach Ely.
    The Aldreth Causeway remained the choice for pilgims and other travellers for the next six hundred years. The old Akeman Street route, which would be the A10, may have started to be used once the fen drainage got under way. Certainly when a bridge was built in the late eighteenth century, it replaced an existing chain-ferry.

    Post-Norman Developments

    St Margaret’s Church, now called King’s Lynn Minster, as it is today.

    The Normans began a process of change. Significant for the northern end of the A10 was the founding, in 1090, of the priory of St Margaret at Lena. The town that grew up round it was called Bishop’s Lena, to us, Bishop’s Lynn.
    By 1230, Ely, Littleport, Downham, and Lynn all had chartered markets. Once there are markets, people will want roads to reach them. The 1205 charter for Bishop’s Lynn’s market specifically allowed the town to collect and keep taxes from road use, so there were roads.
    I can’t find any evidence of a road between Littleport and Downham Market. There may have been a way through Southery, and Hilgay to Denver, and Downham, but it would involve boats, and picking your way across the marshlands.

    The Great Ouse Moves

    The Great Ouse Breaking its banks in 1236

    There was a major flood throughout The Fens in 1236. It resulted in the Great Ouse changing course, to flow past Downham, and into The Wash by Lynn, with a significant impact on the town, and our road.

    The Ebling Seal of the Hanseatic League

    By 1271 Bishop’s Lynn had trading privileges with merchants from around the Baltic, and Hamburg, which became the Hanseatic League. The relationship would last until the sixteenth century, making Lynn, for a time, one of the most important ports in England.

    The Gough Map

    A section of the Gough Map showing Cambridge, Ely and King’s Lynn (which would have been Bishop’s Lynn).
    The thick green lines are rivers, not roads,. We see the how a river connected Ely and Lynn, that would be the Great Ouse,

    When we look at the Gough Map, from the late fourteenth century, we find Cambridge, Ely and King’s Lynn marked, but not Littleport or Downham Market. A road out of Cambridge is shown, but it’s heading for Newmarket. There is nothing that predicts the coming of the A10. In fact Ely is shown as entirely surrounded by water. It is likely, churchmen, and pilgrims would have used the Aldreth Causeway route, though even that might be hazardous in the winter.
    Perhaps it was possible to travel from Cambridge to Ely, and even on to Lynn, but, for the next two hundred years, we have no record of a road, or who was using it .

    Tudor Times along the A10

    Henry VII with the Prince of Wales, the future Henry VIII

    Henry VII and his son the future Henry VIII visited Bishop Alcock while he was Bishop of Ely between 1486 and 1500. How they got there is not recorded.
    In the reign of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, we get an indication of a road running south from King’s Lynn. (It was King’s Lynn by then, Henry had renamed it in 1537). In the summer of 1549, two years after the boy king came to the throne, there was a rural rebellion led by Robert Kett. It arose from a number of causes, economic, religious and social.

    Kett’s Oak at Ryston, from a painting by Robert Elwes (1819 – 1878)

    In support of the rebellion, men from villages between Kings Lynn and Fakenham, gathered north of Lynn, intending to attack the town. The plan was thwarted by Lord Willoughby, so the rebels marched down the future A10 to Ryston Hall, just outside Downham Market. The rebellion is remembered in Norfolk for Kett’s Oak, near Wymondham, but there is another Kett’s Oak in the grounds of Ryston Park.
    It’s not clear how long the contingent stayed at Ryston. It was more a rallying point than a permanent encampment but legend has it, they left a carved wooden tablet carrying the following piece of doggerel:

    Dear Mrs Pratt,
    Your sheep are very fat,
    And we thank you for that.
    We have left you the skins,
    To buy your lady’s pins,
    And you’ll thank us for that12

    The Mrs Pratt was the wife of the owner of Ryston Hall, whose family is still there. The original wooden plaque rotted and was replaced by a stone tablet in the nineteenth century.
    Eventually, having feasted on Mrs Pratt’s mutton, the rebels headed across country to join the main force camped on Mousehold Heath, outside Norwich.

    Cromwell on the A10

    Cromell dismissing the Rump Parliament.

    Through the English Civil Wars, (1642 to 1651) the future A10 ran through predominately Parliament supporting areas.
    Oliver Cromwell would have been familiar with the road, as he lived in Ely for about ten years from 1636. After 1640, he served as MP for Cambridge in the Short, Long, and Rump Parliaments, until he dismissed Parliament in 1653.
    He was at the siege of Kings Lynn in August 1643. We have no record of his coming up the A10 to get there, though it’s possible. The Royalists held the town for the best part of three weeks, until, on 15th September they offered to negotiate a surrender.

    Charles I on the A10

    The Old White Bell, Southery, formerly The Silver Fleece

    During his last days of freedom, in the spring of 1646, King Charles I took refuge in Downham Market.
    It’s not clear how he arrived there. He seems to have cut across the fens, to avoid Ely, so perhaps picked up our road at the Southery Ferry. There is a tale that Charles, and his companions, were guided through The Fens by the landlord of the Silver Fleece Inn, Southery who revelled in the name of ‘Mucky Porter’. I suspect the story is more folklore than history. What seems more certain is the king spent the night of 30th April 1646, at Snore Hall,13 between Hilgay and Denver.

    Next day, Mayday, Charles went on to Downham Market. He stayed at the White Swan, which stood as The Swan on the High Street, until August 2023. The High Street was the A10 from 1923 to 1979.
    Charles changed his disguise, had his hair trimmed, and bought a hat suitable for a parson. Next day, the king and his companions left the line of the A10, going, instead, to Stamford, in Lincolnshire, and then to Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, where he surrendered to the Scottish Army on the 5th May.

    Ogilby’Britannia

    Part of Plare 43 in Britannia showing the road between Littleport and Southery. He marks a ferry just south of Southery. This is the same ferry used by Charles I in 1646

    Looking at Ogilby’s Plate 43, we see his route follows Akeman Street, and the future A10, through Milton to the Stretham Ferry. So, a ferry was operating by the 1670s.
    Britannia’s road through Ely to Littleport gives the line of the A10 in 1923. There was no bridge over the Great Ouse at Littleport, however. The first wave of fen drainage , including cutting of the Old Bedford and New Bedford rivers happened between 1630 and 1650. Thus, Ogilby offers a route from Littleport along, what he marks, as the ‘High Bank’, which ran along the west side of the Great Ouse. It’s likely it was barely a road, but a track along the bank constructed by Cornelius Vermuyden as part of his drainage scheme

    The Ferryboat Inn, taken from a 1970s pub sign.

    The map shows a ferry across the river about a mile short of Southery. There used to be an inn here called, ‘The Ferry Boat’, which closed in the 1980s. We met this crossing in connection with Charles I’s journey to Downham Market.14
    What we have, after Southery is pretty much the line of the A10 in 1923. Hilgay is written as HelGaye, with a wooden bridge marked. Snore Hall (Snowed Hall) is shown off to the east, then Denver (Denber). After Downham the road passes through villages such as Stow Bardolph, given simply as Stow and Setchey which Ogilby calls Seechy, before arriving at King’s Lynn.

    Cambridge to King’s Lynn Turnpikes/

    There were only two turnpike trusts between Cambridge and Lynn. The Cambridge and Ely trust was formed in 1763. It was extended as far as Littleport two years later. Then in 1770 and act was passed which allowed for the continuation of the turnpike to Downham Market, which become the Ely to Downham (North District).15 The original Cambridge to Ely trust added South District to its name. Though they were both the same trust they were administered separately.
    The Cambridge to Ely (South District) built a bridge to replace the Stretham Ferry, in 1784. River crossings were equally an issue for the road from Littleport to Downham Market.
    A bridge across the Great Ouse was built at Littleport by 1774, known as Scotting’s Bridge, in honour of the family who had run the ferry the bridge replaced.

    The confluence of the Little Ouse, with the Great Ouse at Brandon Creek, north of Littleport./

    About three miles further on, the turnpike hit the confluence of the Little Ouse and the Great Ouse, at Brandon Creek. There is some confusion about what happened here. Received wisdom says there was a ferry until 1889.16 I’m minded to think that can’t be correct. Not only does Cary’s Itinerary of 1815 (Page 508) record Brandon Creek Bridge,17 but Faden’s 1797 map of Norfolk18 clearly shows a bridge over the Little Ouse at that spot, as does the 1886 Ordnance Survey map.19

    A Section of Fadenn’s 1797 Map pf Norfok with Brandon Creek Bridge marked .

    I suspect the Turnpike Trust built a bridge at Brandon Creek sometime in the 1790s. So, by around 1800 there was a turnpike road to take you from Ely to Downham Market, which gave us the route of the A10 in 1923.
    Things would have been easier for the sponsors of the Lynn, South Gate Trust, which, in 1770, took responsibility for the road on to Kings Lynn. They followed the well established route down which Kett’s rebels had marched in 1549.

    Section from the 1828 edition of Cary’s New Itinerary, showing from which London inns coaches for King’s Lynn set out.

    The 1828 edition of the Itinerary tell us there were two coaches a day, except Sundays, leaving London for King’s Lynn, via Ely and Downham Market.
    Though well past it’s heyday, Lynn was still an important east coast trading and fishing port, so there would have been plenty of traffic. That is, until the railway from Cambridge reached the town in 1847. It wouldn’t have had a big impact at first, but the writing was on the wall. The turnpike from Cambridge to Downham Market went first, in 1874, while the one from Downham to Lynn hung on until 1877.

    An A10 Arrives

    Definitive maps, and a list of road numbers, were published 1st April 1923. There was the A10 running along the turnpike route between Cambridge and King’s Lynn.

    Part of the MoT 1922-23 map showing the A10 through Ely.

    It went through the towns and villages, with the exception of Waterbeach, which always sat just east of the road. The way through Ely was not straightforward, with an important left turn in front of the Lamb Hotel, a well used coaching stop. From there, through Littleport, over the Great Ouse, and the Little Ouse, Southery, Hilgay, Denver, Downham Market, and so on to King’s Lynn.

    Of course, by the time the A10 got it’s number, the first of the two world wars which blighted the twentieth century had finished. Inevitably places along the road felt the impact of both of them.

    The Two World Wars and the A10

    As everywhere across the land, towns and villages gave up their young men between 1914 and 1918, and those along the A10 were no different.

    Zeppelin Raid over King’s Lynn and surrounding area, January 1915. From a painting by Ben Mullarkey, of Dersingham.

    The Norfolk Regiment, (Later Royal Norfolks) were part of the British Expeditionary Force, and were in France from 1914. The Cambridgeshire Regiment, which included a company based in Ely, landed at Le Havre in February 1915.
    King’s Lynn was one of the first towns to be bombed from a Zeppelin, in January 1915.

    Aircrew leaving their Short Stirling, at Waterbeach 1942.

    During the 2nd World War there was an important airbase at Waterbeach, which sent out bombing raids on occupied Europe. RAF Waterbeach also played an critical role in training aircrew to fly, and mange the larger, four-engined bombers, a vital part of the war effort.
    There was a satellite airfield for RAF Marham at Downham Market. It, too, sent planes out across the North Sea. In fact, the last bombing raid over Germany took off from RAF Downham Market in May 1945.

    Bringing it up to Now

    After the war, the A10 from Cambridge to King’s Lynn stayed as it had been, more or less, since the 1920s. Changes began in the late 1970s with the opening of the Milton Bypass in 1987.

    South Gate, King’s Lynn

    By 1986, all the towns and villages along the road were bypassed. No sweeping stretches of dual carriageway, just a sturdy, two-way road that keeps you clear of places. Eventually you come to the complicated roundabout which is the junction with the A47, from where you can follow what is, probably a very old route, to Lynn’s South Gate, and so into the town.

    These days, most people wouldn’t use the A10 to go from London to Cambridge. There is the M11 after all. But if you’re driving from Cambridge to King’s Lynn, the A10 is the only option. It’s a quite, uneventful road, with some spectacular skyscapes over The Fens, and a surprising amount of hidden history.

    1. Ratleledge, David, 2025. Akeman Street Roman Road from Cambridge to Ely and (probably) Littleport, Travelling with the Romans Website https://www.twithr.co.uk/cambridgeshire/cambridge-ely.htm ↩︎
    2. Haskins, Anthony, et al, 2016. 16 Station Road, Littleport: Archaeological Evaluation, Oxford Archaeology East, https://eprints.oxfordarchaeology.com/2943/1/LITSTR16_Report_1997_LR.pdf ↩︎
    3. Sunley, Thomas, 2007, Parish Summary: Southery, Norfolk Heritage Website, https://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?TNF1715-Southery-(Parish-Summary) ↩︎
    4. Genetic evidence for Germanic migration into England after the Romans left. Gretzinger, J., Sayer, D., Justeau, P., et al, 2022, The Anglo-Saxon Migration and the Formation of the Early English Gene Pool, Nature, 610(7930), 112-119. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2 ↩︎
    5. Wright, A., P., M., and Lewis, C., P., (Eds.), 1989. Milton: Manor and other estates’, in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds, British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol9/pp179-182 ↩︎
    6. Liber Eliensis is an account of the history of the Isle of Ely compiled by a monk of Ely in the later twelfth century. See: Fairweather, Janet, 2005, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth, Compiled by a Monk of Ely in the Twelfth Century, Boydell Press ↩︎
    7. Cambridgeshire Historical Background, REED online, https://ereed.org/collections/cambs/background/ ↩︎
    8. Kelly, S.,E., and Rushforth, R., 2010, S1526, The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, S483, https://esawyer.robinson.cam.ac.uk/charter/483.html ↩︎
    9. Beeke, Clive, 2006, Duke Ailwyn, Benefactors and Benefactions, History of Ramsey Abbey Website, https://ramseyabbey.co.uk/benefactors-and-benefactions/ ↩︎
    10. Samantha Letters, Online Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 https://archives.history.ac.uk/gazetteer/norf.html#D ↩︎
    11. Rye, James, 2026, No Empty Marsh: The Roots of King’s Lynn Before 1066, Circato Website, https://circato.co.uk/lynn-before-1066-salt-power-wash ↩︎
    12. Bale, David 2015, A Glimpse of Norfolk’s Other Kett’s Oak, Eastern Daily Press, https://www.edp24.co.uk/lifestyle/20902988.glimpse-norfolks-ketts-oak/ ↩︎
    13. Snore Hall (Snowre Hall), Dicamilo Website, https://www.thedicamillo.com/house/snore-hall/ ↩︎
    14. TL6193: The former Ferry Boat Inn beside the River Great Ouse, Geograph Website, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3410056 ↩︎
    15. Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain1770 c. 97 (Regnal. 10_Geo_3), legislation.gov.uk Website, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo3/10/97/enacted ↩︎
    16. Petty, Mike, 2022, Brandon Creek Bridge, 1889, Fenland History on Facebook, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1026849820769556/posts/4684186088369226/ ↩︎
    17. Cary, John, 1815. Cary’s New Itinerary, S Gosnell, Printer, Little Queen Street, London ↩︎
    18. Donald, Thomas, and Thomas Milne (with assistants), 1797, A topographical map of the county of Norfolk, surveyed and measured in the years 1790, 91, 92, 93 and 94, W Faden. National Library of Scotland Website, https://maps.nls.uk/view/262718474 ↩︎
    19. Ordnance Survey, Norfolk Sheet LXXXI.SW, Surveyed: 1886, Published: 1886, National Library of Scotland Website, https://maps.nls.uk/view/101583536 ↩︎
  • A10 Part 2: M25 to Cambridge

    A10 Part 2: M25 to Cambridge

    This second part of the history of the A10 road takes us from where it crosses the M25 to Cambridge. We will find today’s route took a time to settle. The Romans approached Cambridge differently from how people in the Middle Ages went, and the modern route did not arrive until the eighteenth century. As you may imagine, a certain amount of history has played out along the A10.

    The Roman A10: Ermine Street

    We like to say the A10 runs along Ermine Street, (Margary number, 2) but, it turns out to be more complicated. By the time the Roman road crossed where the M25 would be, their road lay west of our A10. It headed straight north, skimming the western edge of Hertford Heath, to cross the River Lea at Ware, already an Iron-Age settlement.1
    From there, the Roman road followed the Cambridge Road, through Wadesmill to Puckeridge. About three-quarters of a mile beyond Puckeridge, the road crossed the River Rib, near Braughing, a significant Roman settlement on the junction with Stane Street running east/west between St Albans and Colchester2
    Ermine Street rejoined the line of the A10 a little south of Buntingford. Today’s road bypasses the attractive market town, but the ghost of the straight Roman road runs through it, still called Ermine Street on its way north. The A10 maps Ermine Street to Royston. The Romans continued north, to Godmanchester along the A1198, originally the A14, but that number got used for a completely different road.

    The Roman A10: Akeman Street

    Nowadays, as you come into Royston, you hit one-way signs, and the A10 follows a long right-hand bend towards Cambridge. The Roman route, though, continued along Ermine Street for about four and a half miles, to a junction with a road running south-west to Sandy, on today’s A1. On the other side of this junction, a road, known as Akeman Street (Margary Number 23), made off north-east, more or less, following the route of today’s A603. In Roman times, it arrived at Castle Hill, in Cambridge, where there was a fort called Duroliponte, or perhaps Durolipons.

    The Anglo-Saxon Road

    Angles, Jutes, and Saxons arriving.

    Waltham is perhaps one of the oldest Saxon settlements in that part of Essex, its church dating from 700 BCE.3 As Cheshunt and Hoddesdon are both in the Domesday Book, we can assume they were there before the Normans came.
    Ware had been a Romano-British settlement, whose significance increased when the River Lea was made the boundary of Danelaw territory in 886. Alfred the Great set about building weirs, to prevent the Danes from sailing down river to attack London. It is now generally believed that the name Ware came from the Saxon word for a weir, ‘waras’.4
    Once the Romans left, Angles, and other Germanic groups began to arrive at Cambridge. There were settlements around Market Hill, and by the river, with an inland port for vessels coming up from the Wash. During the Saxon period a bridge was built over the Cam where Magdalene Bridge (also known as Great Bridge) is today. It would carry the A10 until the 1980s. The town was overrun by Danish invaders in the ninth century, and was sacked, and burned by Vikings, in 1010. Naturally, such a thriving settlement was immediately rebuilt, and is recorded as a sizeable town in Domesday5.

    The Road Through the Middle Ages

    Eleanor’s Cross at Waltham froman18th century print

    When the Normans arrived, Ermine Street already ran north from London, coming to be known as The Old North Road. Waltham Cross was the first town they met. An abbey had stood on the east bank of the River Lea from 1030, but Waltham Cross, on the other bank, came later. It grew up because, following the death of his beloved wife, Eleanor of Castile, in 1290, Edward I had her coffin carried to Westminster to be buried. At each place the sad procession halted overnight, Edward commanded a cross to be built. A town grew up around the elaborate cross, one of only three that survive from the original twelve, which became Waltham Cross

    Pilgrims along Walsingham Way

    Further up the road, Ware was a known stopping-off place for pilgrims heading to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. After Canterbury, Walsingham was perhaps the most visited shrine in England. In fact, for a long time, the main street through Ware was known as Walsingham Way.
    Pilgrims would have continued up the A10, turning off at Puckeridge to go through Barkway, before turning east along the Icknield Way to Newmarket and Bury St Edmunds, and on to Little Walsingham.

    Royston Arrives

    Roysia’s Stone in Royston

    Royston is a town which came because of the road. Early in the Norman period a woman, known to us as Lady Roysia, (there are two contenders) had a cross erected at the Ermine Street/Icknield Way crossroad. She used a boulder, probably glacial moraine from the last Ice Age, as the base. The cross is long gone, but the stone still sits where the ancient roads met. No town yet, though as it arrived it became known as Roysia’s Stone, and eventually, Royston. A Papal Bull of 1184 tells us there was already a small priory at Roysia’s Cross. The following year, Richard I granted the priory a charter to hold a weekly market, and a fair at Whitsun. Now we have the makings of a town. Given its position on two major highways, it is not surprising Royston flourished.

    Religious Image carved into the wall of the Royston Cave

    There is a curiosity; a man-made cave found in 1742, just to the east of the crossroad. The walls carry religious images, and perhaps, Royston Cave was used by the Knights Templar. Unfortunately, as all the soil that filled the space, together with anything buried in it, was thrown away, there is really no firm evidence for who dug it. You can, though, book a guided visit, at the weekends in the summer.

    The Gough Map and the Cambridge Road

    Section from the Gough Map, sowing the route from London to Cambridge through Barkway. Notice, the North Road continues straight. through Royston and Caxton.

    Pilgrims heading for Walsingham were unlikely to go through Royston to reach the junction with Akeman Street.

    The Gough map, from the late fourteenth century, clearly shows the road from London to Cambridge left the Roman road after Ware, to go through Barkway to reach Cambridge. The turning was probably at Puckeridge, foreshadowing today’s B1368. The route became known as ‘The High Way to Cambridge’. Once the university at Cambridge was established in 1209, it was the road students travelling from London would certaily have taken.6

    Tudor on the A10

    Henry VII

    Henry VII visited Cambridge at the end of the fifteenth century. It is recorded he
    “rode to Waltham; and from thens the High Way to Cambrige…where he was honourably received both of the university and the town.”7

    Early image od the interior of King’s College Chapel

    He visited four more times, including in April 1506. On that occasion he attended a service at the uncompleted King’s College Chapel, and was so impressed he began financing the next phase of the work, and left money towards its completion in his will.

    Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s Mother

    Henry was following his mother’s example. She, Margaret Beaufort, re-founded Godshouse as Christ’s College in 1505, and St John’s College in 1511.

    Trinity College on a sixteenth century map

    Margaret’s grandson, Henry VIII, only visited Cambridge once, in 1522. However, he did found Trinity College in 1546. It grew from the merger of two existing colleges, Michaelhouse and King’s Hall, both of which dated to the fourteenth century. Structures from both of the former colleges exist within Trinity, including The Great Gate which had been part of Kings Hall.

    John Leland was in Cambridge, on Henry’s business, sometime in the 1530s. From the point of view of the road, he provides some vital information. He says, he left Cambridge, and went through Hauxton, (Hauston) to reach Royston (Reiston). Thus, he gives us of the first records a route that prefigures the A10 from Cambridge to Royston. It has to be said, Leland was not overwhelmed by the charms of Royston, and the surrounding area.8

    Queen Mary I’s Travels in 1553

    Princess Mary, Henry VII’s eldest child, and the future Mary I

    On the 6th July 1553 Edward VI, Henry VIII’s only son, died. John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, de facto regent over the fifteen-year-old king, kept his death a secret. According to Henry VIII’s will, Mary, his elder daughter, by Catherine of Aragon, should succeed. Northumberland, though, mounted a coup d’etat to put the protestant Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
    Knowing how ill the boy was, he had already sent urgent letters to Mary, and her half-sister, Elizabeth, calling them to Greenwich.

    Mary’s probable route to reach Hoddesdon, before turning to head into Norfolk.

    Mary had been living in seclusion at Hunsdon House, about four miles south-east of Ware. In response to Northumberland’s letter, she set out for London, probably joining the Old North Road just beyond Stanstead St Margarets. She then headed south as far as Hoddesdon, on the London Road, three and a half miles south of Ware. Here she was intercepted by her supporters, who told her the invitation to Greenwich was a trap, and urged her to flee into East Anglia.9
    Mary turned north up the line of the original A10, then along the familiar High Way to Cambridge. It is probable she took the road through Barkway, but, further north, most likely turned east onto Icknield Street, (now the A505). That night, she stayed at Sawston Hall, six miles south of Cambridge, leaving early the next morning to travel to Norfolk.

    Elizabeth I and William Cecil’s Visit to Cambridge

    William Cecil with Elizabeth

    Queen Elizabeth I made a sumptuous four day visit to Cambridge in the summer 1564. However, it doesn’t look as though she used the A10.
    William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary, did though,travel our road to oversee the preparation for the visit He set out, from Enfield Palace, along Ermine Street, turning off to stay with friends at Standon, near Puckeridge.10 That put him on the The High Way through Barkway, to Cambridge.

    James I along the Cambridge Road

    The Old Palace, Royston, as we have it today

    James must have travelled the A10 frequently. He was certainly in Royston on 30th April 1603, on his journey from Edinburgh to London for his coronation. So taken, was he with the quality of the hunting there, he reserved an area of fourteen miles surrounding the town for his exclusive use.
    Next, he began building, what became known as, The Old Palace, on Kneesworth Street, which was on the A10 until the late 1960s . The palace was large enough for part of his retinue to follow him there, but small enough for James to feel it was an escape from Westerniser. However, having the king takeover the centre of their town did not go well with many people in Royston, not that they could do much about it.

    Theobald’s House, or Palace

    James also favoured another house, further south. Theobald’s House, or Palace, was just west of our road on the borders of Waltham Cross and Cheshunt. William Cecil, Lord Burley, had built it, on the site of an older house, over a period of twenty years, starting in 1564. The king clearly coveted the place, to the extent that, in 1607, he persuaded Robert Cecil, Williams’s son, to swap it for Hatfield House. James used Theobald”s regularly, indeed he died there, in March 1625.

    Statues of James i, Anne of Denmark, and Charles, then Prince of Wales, on the inner face of Trinity Great Gate.

    James would, almost certainly, have travelled at least part the A10 when he visited Cambridge, twice, in 1615. If he started out from Royston, there is the possibility that he began establishing the modern A10 route from there to Cambridge. The visits are commemorated by statues of the king, Anne of Denmark, and Charles, then Prince of Wales on the inner face of the Great Gate of Trinity College, facing the Great Court.
    James returned to the city, once more, in 1624, to, among other things, sign the treaty agreeing the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria of France.

    Oliver Cromewell

    Cromwell would have been very familiar with the Old North Road, and The High Road to Cambridge. He had gown up in Huntingdon, and owned a house in Ely, for a decade starting in 1636. When in 1640, Charles I, after eleven years of ruling without a Parliament, was finally forced to recall one, Cromwell sat as the member for Cambridge. That Parliament only lasted twenty-three days. Cromwell, though, retained his seat when Parliament was recalled in November 1640. It was the start of what is called ‘the Long Parliament’, in which Cromwell played a leading role until 1653.

    Unrest on the Road to Cambridge

    From an 18th cetury print of the skirmish at Corkbush Field.

    In 1647 during the political ferment following the king’s capture, a section of the parliamentary army mutinied at Corkbush Field, a little north of Ware. The trouble started when Sir Thomas Fairfax refused to accept a copy of the Agreement of the People, drawn up at the Putney Debates, presented to him by the radical, Thomas Rainsborough.
    As the disturbance came to a head, Cromwell, himself, rode against the mutineers, sword in hand. One agitator was shot, and the upsurge of discontent quelled.11

    The First Turnpike

    The first-ever turnpike gate was erected at Wadesmill in 1663. The village, about two and a half miles north of Ware, stands on Ermine Street, and between 1923 and 2004, was on the A10. The Feathers Inn, a coach stop dating from the early seventeenth century still stands in the middle of the village.

    A plaque marking where the Wadesmill tollhouse once stood.

    The system was not what it would be. Responsibility for the upkeep of the road was put in the hands of magistrates, with the luckless Parish Surveyors tasked with summoning “Stature Labour” to carry out repairs. It was an Old North Road scheme, running from Cheshunt through Ware to Royston, with a branch from Puckeridge to Barkway, and Barley.
    It was a start, but took time to catch on. More than sixty years passed before a turnpike was opened south from Cheshunt (the Cheshunt Turnpike Trust, May 1725 11 Geo. I c 11), connecting to the road coming out of London.

    A10 Turnpikes Heading North

    Turnpike Trusts along the Cambridge Road

    The branch of the Wadesmill Turnpike which went through Barkway, fed into the Hauxton and Dunsbridge Turnpike (1725) which took the road as far as Trumpington. Here it joined the Stump Cross Turnpike, coming in from Essex, which continued our road into central Cambridge.
    Late in the century (1793) the Hauxton and Dunsbridge Trust also took responsibility for a stretch of road coming up from Royston, which met the existing route at Hauxton. This is the branch which was destined to become the A10.
    Drive it today, and you will cover a short stretch of road, north of Melbourn, which still calls itself Dunsbridge Turnpike. The bridge is Dun’s Bridge over the River Shep, which easily goes by unnoticed.
    Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century there were turnpike roads all the way from London to Cambridge. Once there were better roads, the coaching business could grow.

    Cary’s Itineraries

    In the 1798 edition of Cary’s Itinerary, the first route from London to Cambridge is familiar. Out of London along the Old North Road, to Puckeridge, then through Barkway to Trumpington. However, the Itinerary offers two other routes. One is through Royston, then along a path that will be the A10 to Cambridge. The third almost prefigures the M11, going via Bishop Stortford, then across country to Trumpington.

    Old print of the Four Swans, Waltham Cross


    This early edition of the Itinerary does not tell us from which London inns coaches left for Cambridge, but it does give us some inns along the way.
    In Waltham Cross were two inns. Of the Falcon, which disappeared in 1974, there is no trace.

    Replica of the original sign for the Four Swans in Waltham Cross High Street

    However, the Four Swans, also a martyr to development, is remembered by a replica of its sign, which once straddled the North Road, to be found on the High Street.

    The Old Bull’s Head, Ware

    In Ware, The Old Bull’s Head, just called the Bull by Cary still stands on Baldock Street. It was one of the places the Great Bed of Ware was displayed, around 1765.
    I’ve already mentioned the Feathers at Wadesmill, which Cary lists. None of the other coaching inns along the next stretch of road, given in Cary, have survived, until we come to the Coach and Horses, Trumpington. No longer an Inn, it survives as the Sole & Duck restaurant.

    Part of central Cambridge, showing Rose Crescent. © Openctreetmaps

    In Cambridge, all the hostelries in the 1798 Itinerary have gone. One of the two in Trumpington Street revelled in the name of The Cardinal’s Cap, presumably a throwback to pre-reformation times. We can find the ghost of the Rose in Rose Crescent, where the inn once stood.
    By the 1828 edition of Cary we read Cambridge coaches set off from popular inns in London such as the Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, and The Golden Cross, at Charing Cross. We also learn, that by this date more coaches were using the route through Royston, rather than through Barkway.

    Cyclist on the Road

    As everywhere, the arrival of the railways destroyed long-distance coach travel. Trains arrived in Cambridge in July 1845, leaving the route of the A10 available to cyclists. A club, the Southgate Cycling Club was established in 1882 south-west of Enfield. Even though Southgate isn’t quite on the A10, It’s not far off, and members must have ridden it from the word go. No doubt they still do.

    Ion Keith-Falconer, with one of his enormous bikes.

    At first, bicycles were expensive, and dangerous, so became the playthings of the rich and daring. One such was Ion Keith-Falconer. His enthusiasm for bikes had started while still at Harrow School, but blossomed when he went up to Cambridge in 1873. When the Cambridge University Cycle Club was founded the following year, he became a vice-president. Given his background, Keith-Falconer was able to afford an ‘Ordinary ‘or ‘Highwheeler’, otherwise known as a ‘Penny-farthing’, specially built to accommodate his robust six-foot three inch stature. In a letter to his brother’s wife, he wrote:

    ”Today I am going to amuse the public by riding an 86-inch bicycle to Trumpington and back … It is great fun riding this leviathan: it creates such an extraordinary sensation among the old dons who happen to be passing.12

    ‘He was said to be the fastest cyclist in the world, during his time at Cambridge. In 1882, he rode from Land’s End to John o’Groats in 13 days. Quite an achievement riding over un-tarmacked roads, on a machine with a high centre of gravity, and virtually no brakes.
    Of course people such as Keith-Falconer were a tiny exception to the millions who took to two wheels, as designs improved, and reasonable priced bikes became available.

    Cars are Coming

    Charles Rolls

    Charles Rolls was the first Cambridge undergraduate to own a car.

    A Peugeot Phaeton from the 1890s

    He had imported a 3¾ hose power Peugeot Phaeton, in 1896, around the time he started at the university.
    His later career, and subsequent meeting with Henry Royce, took him away from the A10.
    Cars were the coming thing though, and would have an impact on all our roads. As it became clear how important motor transport was likely to be, the pressure to devise road categories and numbers became irresistible.

    The A10 Gets a Number

    The number A10 was attached to our road, along with all the others, in 1923.

    A section of the 1923 Ministry of Transport map with the dotted line showing the route of the modern A10 was already planned.

    The road, pretty much, ran along the turnpike route, making its way through all the towns in its path.
    However, on the section of the map showing Waltham Cross and Cheshunt, there is a dotted line to the west of the road which shows the planners already had a route bypassing the towns, in mind. It would, eventually be today’s A10.

    A section of the 1923 Ministry of Transport map, showing the A10 going through Wadesmaill

    North of Ware the road went through Wadesmill on its way to Puckeridge. It didn’t turn along the older High Road, but carried on to Royston, then through Melbourn, and Harston, to reach Trumpington.

    King’s Parade to Trinity Street, central Cambridge ©Opemstreetmaps.

    From Trumpington the road ran into Cambridge, not unreasonably, via Trumpington Road. It then went straight along King’s Parade, and Trinity Street.
    Of course, it went on from there, but that is for the next post.

    The First Half of the 20th Century along the A10

    By the time the A10 got its number the first of the century’s two catastrophic World Wars was over. During the second, there were two air force bases, close to the A10, between the M25 and Cambridge.

    The de Havilland Mosquito, the plywood plane

    We’ve met Hunsdon, east of Ware, in connection with Mary I, but there was an airfield there which was a base for Mosquito fighter-bombers from 1942

    Fowelmere is not on A10, but it was on The High Road to Cambridge. The airfield was originally a satellite for Duxford, then later, used by the USAF as a fighter base.

    Early Bypasses along the Road

    The first bypass along the A10 happened between the wars. We saw, on the 1923 MoT map, that a road diverting traffic around Waltham Cross and Cheshunt was always in the plan. By 1925 it was up and running, as the A108. It had to wait until the early 1950s to become the A10, as we have it today.

    There were no other changes for almost fifty years, then in 1973, Puckeridge was bypassed. The scheme involved rerouting the A120 from Bishop Stortford, which insted of meeting the A10 in the centre of Puckeridge, joined at the southern end of the new bypass.

    Line of the 1976 Broxbourne, Hoddesdon, and Ware bypass

    By 1976 an eight mile stretch of new road took the A10 west of Broxbourne, Hoddesdon, and Ware.
    North of Ware though, it reverted to its original Ermine Street and turnpike line as far as the Puckeridge bypass.

    The most sinfifcant change came in February 1980, when the final section of the M11, between the A11 junction and the Girton Interchange, opened. As a result, as you make your way past Hauxton towards Trumpington, you meet a sign which directs you onto the motorway. The A10 no longer goes to, or through Cambridge. The traditional route has become the A1309.
    Originally, once at the Girton Interchange, where the M11 ends, you were sent east, along the A45 Northern Bypass. But in 1994, it became A14. The result is, the Cambridge Road no longer goes to Cambridge.
    That is how matters stand. The stretch of the A10 passed Wadesmill was finally bypasses in 2004. In general though, if you’re going from London to Cambridge, you will use the M11. Our road is still there, still useful to reach Ware or Royston. From the M25 to south of Buntingford, it’s good dual carriageway, in fact, though parts may feel as if they are in genteel decline, it’s a good road to drive.
    We must also remember, the A10 goes beyond Cambridge, across the fens to King Lynn. But that’s for the next post.

    1. Barbrook, Karys, The Roman Roads of Hertfordshire: Ermine Street, Herts Memories Website, Hertfordshire County Council, https://www.hertsmemories.org.uk/content/herts-history/towns-and-villages/ware/roman-roads-hertfordshire-ermine-street ↩︎
    2. Ermine Street, SABRE Roads Website https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/Ermine_Street ↩︎
    3. Powell, W., R., (Ed.), 1966. Waltham Holy Cross: Introduction and Manors, British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol5/pp151-162 ↩︎
    4. Ware Town Council Website, Town Hstory. https://www.waretowncouncil.gov.uk/visit-ware/town-history/ ↩︎
    5. Boyd, Stephanie, 2023, The Story of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press ↩︎
    6. Kilby, Marty, 2009, Milestones: a very short history of the B1368 milestones from Puckeridge to Barley, A Hormead Parish Viewpoint Website, https://hormeadvillagehall.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/13milestones.pdf ↩︎
    7. The Herald’s Memoir a rare contemporary manuscript—housed in the British Library as Cotton MS Julius B. XII ↩︎
    8. Toulmin Smith, Lucy (ed.), The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–1543, Appendix III, Vol. 1 ↩︎
    9. Cornish, Alan, 2012. England’s Forgotten coup d’etat, The Friends of Wanstead Parkland Website, https://wansteadpark.org.uk/history/tudors-twenty-eight-days-to-wanstead/ ↩︎
    10. Purdy, Gilbert, Wesley, 2021. Elizabeth I’s Progress to Cambridge University, 1564: Final Inspections, Virtual Grub Street Website, https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/04/elizabeth-is-progress-to-cambridge_11.html ↩︎
    11. The Corkbush Field Mutiny, November 1647, B C W Project Website, https://bcw-project.org.uk/military/second-civil-war/corkbush-field ↩︎
    12. Cambridge Cycling Pioneers, 2021. The lives of Ion Keith-Falconer and Edward Conybeare, Museum of Cambridge Website, https://www.museumofcambridge.org.uk/2021/04/cambridge-cycling-pioneers/ ↩︎
  • History Along the A53: Buxton through the Potteries to Shrewsbury

    History Along the A53: Buxton through the Potteries to Shrewsbury

    Though the A53 only covers some fifty-five miles, there is more history along it than you might expect. As a result, this post is slightly longer than some. The road is mostly rural, some of it dating back to the Romans, except for where it goes through Stoke-on-Trent, the historic centre of Britain’s pottery industry.

    The Roman Connection

    Buxton has a natural warm spring, so of course, the Romans were there. They called the town ‘Aquae Arnemetiae’, built bathhouses, and made votive offering at the spring itself. A hoard of coins, whose dates covered the occupation period, was found in 1975.1 The only other ‘Aquae’ town in Britain was Bath, in Somerset.

    Romans built a road from Buxton to Leek, which, as today, kept just east of Axe Edge Moor, offering spectacular views over the Derbyshire landscape. This part of the A53 mostly follows the route the Romans laid out.
    After Leek, the Romans left the line of our road, and went to Blythe Bridge.

    There it met a road from Little Chester, in Derby, which went through Blythe Bridge, to a fort and settlement at Chesterton, just north of Newcastle-under-Lyme.2 That road, continued through Middlewich with a branch going to Chester, while another headed north to cross the Mersey at Warrington. It was a part of a network of roads in the area, including one running directly from Buxton to Little Chester.

    Saxon Settlements along the A35

    A Page from the Domesday Book.

    One way to get some idea of which towns and villages arrived along the road in the Saxon period is to see if they are listed in the Domesday Book of 1087. Of course Buxton and Leek appear, but then there is no other settlement until you reach Burslem, (which is listed as Bacardeslim) so is Woolstanton. Neither are on our A53, but they were on the turnpike, until the 1840s.
    Further south-west, more places were already established by 1087. Before you reach Market Drayton, which is in the book, we find Whitmore, recorded as Witemore. Beyond Market Drayton, Wolerton, and Hodnet, are both in Domesday. They aren’t on today’s A53, but were until the 2003 bypass arrived. Shawbury and Shrewsbury, both founded in the Saxon era, are listed. A line of settlements, yes, but no record of a road, though there must have been one, we just don’t know where it ran.

    The A53 in the High and Late Middle Ages

    A section of the Gough Map showing Shrewsbury and Newcastle-under-Lyme. There is a road going from Shrewsbury to Chester, while the road through Newcastle comes from Stafford, through Stone. It continues west before swinging north to reach Warrington, much as the Roman road did.

    Throughout this period, it is difficult to find direct evidence for a road which might be the forerunner of the A57. The Gough Map, from the late fourteenth century, does mark Shrewsbury and Newcastle-under-Lyme, though no sign of a road. That does not always matter, but none of the other towns or villages along the way are given. The road shown tends to run more east-west than north-south.
    Important abbeys stood at Shrewsbury and Dieulacres, just north of Leek. Shrewsbury was pilgrim centre, but I can find no records of the roads along which pilgrims travelled.

    15th Century Battles along the Road: the Battle of Shrewsbury

    It is a sad fact that evidence of a road too often comes from warfare and battles. I have been saying the A53 runs from Buxton to Shrewsbury, in fact, it never reaches Shrewsbury, stopping about three miles to the north-east at Battlefield. The village gets its name from being the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury, in July 1403.3

    Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, from a manuscript illustration

    On one side were the forces of Henry IV, who had deposed Richard II and seized the crown. Against him was an army led by Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland. Though they had helped Henry Bolingbroke to seize the crown, the Northumberlands had fallen out with him. Hotspur had been involved with trying to suppress Owain Glyndŵr’s uprising in Wales, but had changed sides, and was bent on taking Shrewsbury, and link up with the Welsh forces. Neither army marched along our road, but where the battle was fought marks the southerly end of today’s A53.

    Fragment of an 18th century picture of the Battle of Shrewsbury, from Pennant’s ‘A tour in Wales’4

    It was the usual bloody affair. Although Hotspur’s men were outnumbered, at first, they held off the king’s forces. In the end, though, they were overcome, and Henry ‘Hotspur’ killed. The result was to consolidate Henry IV’s grip on power.

    A manuscript illustration of John Bradmore removing the arrow from the face of Prince Henry, the future Henry V

    An interesting note is that Henry, Prince of Wales, the future King Henry V, (there are a lot of Henrys in this story) took part in the battle, though still only fifteen. During the fighting, an arrow hit him in the face, just beside his nose. He, refused to leave the field, fearing it would dishearten the troops, but later the London surgeon, John Bradmore, removed the shaft, leaving the arrowhead where it was. It is difficult to know what damage was done, but the arrow must have smashed Henry’s maxillary bone, and could have broken upper teeth, or pierced the nasal cavity. Whatever the case, he had to wait some days while Bradmore devised a special tool with which he was able to extract the rest of the arrow.5 The whole process must have been excruciatingly painful, and, remarkably, no serious infection developed. The Prince of Wales recovered, though he must have carried a scar for the rest of his life.

    15th Century Battles along the Road: the Battle of Blore Heath, 1459

    Another battle took place fifty-three years later, a little north of Market Drayton at a village now called Loggerheads, It is a relatively recent arrival, not marked in my 1952 Bartholomew Atlas. An inn, called the Three Loggerheads, which stood by the road from the sixteen hundreds is still there today, now called The Loggerheads, just off a mini-roundabout on the outskirts of the village. The name is the subject of some debate, but rather than celebrating three not very clever chaps, it probably refers to the three leopard heads, known as ‘loggerheads’, on the coat of arms of Shrewsbury.

    Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury

    The village wasn’t there in September 1459, when Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, brought his troops towards Market Drayton, down the road from Newcastle-under-Lyme. He was hurrying to join forces with those of his bother-in-law, the Duke of York, at Ludlow. It led to the first set-piece battle in what we now call the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Blore Heath.6

    Henry VI

    The tie to the Battle of Shrewsbury is, Henry IV grandson, Henry VI, was king. He suffered from a psychiatric disorder, which allowed other warlords, particularly Richard of York, to try for the throne. The king may not have been in a good way, but his queen, Margaret of Anjou, an intelligent and forceful character, had taken charge of the situation.

    Margaret of Anjou

    The Queen ordered Lord Audley to go to Market Drayton to cut-off Salisbury’s advance, and take him prisoner. It is likely the line of the road sat further north at the time, but eventually the opposing forces faced each other at Blore Heath, close to Loggerheads.
    The details of the battle are complicated, but Audley seems to have made a reckless charge, his forces becoming mired crossing a brook, allowing the Yorkists to counter-attack. The Lancastrian infantry joined the fray, and during the vicious struggle that ensued, Audley was killed. That was the end really, the Lancastrian troops broke, some joining the Yorkist ranks.

    Audley’s Cross near Loggerheads

    It is believed Margaret of Anjou watched the defeat of her army from the tower of St Mary’s Mucklestone church, a mile north of the A53. The tower still stands, having survived several restorations to the rest of the building.
    A cross was erected at the spot Lord Audley died. It was replaced in 1765 with the stone one which stands today.


    Turnpikes Arrive Along the Road

    We’re skipping a couple of centuries because I can’t find any evidence of a road from Buxton, through Newcastle-under-Lyme, to Shrewsbury during that time. One was there, for sure, but no record of it. None of the usual suspects, John Leland, John Ogilby, Celia Fiennes, are any help. They do show us Shrewsbury, and Newcastle-under-Lyme existed, but didn’t use the road running between them.

    Turnpike Trusts along the road from ShrewsbuBuxton

    The first turnpike along the road was between Shrewsbury and Shawbury, came in 1756. It was part of a trust covering several roads, so is called the Preston Brockhurst Trust. That was it for nine years.

    In 1765, Josiah Wedgwood wrote, in a letter to his brother, “We pray to…. have the Road made turnpike from Buxton and Bakewell to Leek, & from Leek to Newcastle.”7

    His wish was partly granted, in that the bill establishing the Newcastle-under-Lyme and Leek Trust was passed that year. He had a wait until 1773 for the road from Leek to Buxton to have a turnpike. Meanwhile, two trusts, established in 1769, covered the road from Shawbury to Newcastle.
    Though the turnpikes laid down the basic outline of the future A53, they didn’t give the exact route.8 We’ve already seen that the villages Hodnet and Wollerton were on the road until 2003, and the Shawbury Turnpike ran through them. It must be remembered, there was no call for bypasses. Stage coaches needed to stop at inns every eight to ten miles. So the turnpikes went through the centre of Shawbury, and Market Drayton.

    The Turnpike Through Newcastle-under-Lyme

    Section of an Ordnace Survey mapof Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1876-78. © Library of Scotland

    Getting through Newcastle, matters became complicated. There was a north/south turnpike from before the Newcastle-under-Lyme and Drayton Trust began. The turnpike on our road would have come into Newcastle along Church Street to end at Lion Square. The square has gone now, but it sat where High Street, Liverpool Road and Bridge Street meet. The Newcastle-under-Lyme and Leek Trust, established four years earlier, took over, going along Merrial Street, which used to become Marsh street. On the late 1870s map, Nelson Place is marked, but it wasn’t fully developed until 1818. In the eighteenth century, Marsh Street took you to Queen Street, and on towards Burslem.

    Through ‘The Potteries’

    Part of a sketch map drawn by Josiah Wedgwood, from a letter to Thomas Bentley, showing the Ridgehouse Estate, which became Etruria.

    The sketch map on the right, the Ridgehouse Estate, bought by Wedgwood in 1766. It shows the “Road to Newcastle” running past what would become Etruria in 1769. The blue line is the Trent and Mersey Canal, which wasn’t finished until 1777.
    The mid-eighteenth century was the period when the six towns, which we know as ‘The Potteries’, expanded to become one of the leading ceramic manufacturing centres in the World.
    The area, particularly around Burslem, had been known for its potters from at least the fourteenth century, if not before. It offered easily dug clays of several different types, and coal. In addition, people held their land as ‘Copyholders’9 which gave them more freedom to operate independently from the great landowners.

    Josiahs, Spode and Wedgwood

    The Wedgwood family were an established pottery makes, but Josiah Wedgwood, who opened his first ‘potbank’ in 1759, had the drive and vision essential to the explosive rise of ‘The Potteries’. He was by no means alone, however. The likes of William Greatbatch, Thomas Whieldon, and of course, Josiah Spode, among others, revolutionised what could be made from clay.

    A fragment from William Yates’ 1775 map of North Staffordshire

    How the turnpike make its way through ‘The Potteries’ is complicated. To try to make sense of it, we can turn to William Yate’s map of North Staffordshire, 1775.10
    We see after it left Newcastle, the road climbed toward Corbridge, which is marked as Cow Bridge. It must have picked up the southern end of today’s Elder Road. This in turn fed into what we now know as Nile Street. One branch of the road continued north into Burslem. The road to Leek, though, took a right turn into Hot Lane, continuing on through Norton, to meet with the line of the modern A53 at Endon.

    The line of Leek New Road, which became the A53, with the route of the 1765 turnpike

    We’re not quite finished with the A53 turnpikes through the Potteries. A new, straight piece of road was built, starting about 1839, running off from the southern end of Elder Road, through Stockton Brook, to Endon. Leek New Road is still the line of our road today. From Endon, the turnpike pretty much mapped today’s A53 as far as Leek.

    Leek to Buxton

    A simplified map of the centre of Leek

    The basic road pattern in the centre of Leek hasn’t changed much from the eighteenth century. The road from Derby, via Ashbourne to Stockport, the A523, runs north-west/south-east, with our A53 going in the other direction. Today you are kept away from the centre, directed along roads which were always there, but now form a ring round the town.
    The turnpikes, though, would have made for the Market Place, or Derby road to stop at one of the two principal inns the Red Lion, and The Roebuck, both still with us. They would then have set out, once more, along Stockwell Street to reached Buxton Road, which is today’s A53.
    From Leek, the turnpike went through Upper Hulme, which was bypassed in the 1950s and on to Flash Bar, a little north of Flash, the highest village in England.

    The Knights’ Table, once the Travvellers’ Rest at Flash Bar, on the turnpike to Buxton

    There was a tollgate here, and an inn called the Travellers Rest, which is now a bed and breakfast, called the Knights’ Table. In its time, Flash had a reputation for roguery. The remote setting, on the borders of Derbyshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire, allowed the lawless to skip from one jurisdiction to another to avoid being arrested. The village was particularly known for counterfeiting coins, to the extent that “Flash money” entered the language.
    Just past Flash Bar, the road, which has been climbing steadily since leaving Leek, starts to head down, revealing sweeping views to your right. The turnpike went this way, down hill past the junction with a turnpike heading for Congleton, now the A54, and so into Buxton.

    Cycling along the Road

    As the turnpikes faded, a boom in cycling happened, all around the country. The North Staffordshire Bicycle Club began in the 1870s, in association with the Victoria Athletic Club, which was formed in 1868 to organise a sports meeting for the annual Wakes Week.

    Early map of the Victoria Athletic Ground, showing the oval track around the Football Ground, which became the home of Stoke City F.C.

    In 1878, the club opened the Victoria Athletic Ground, which included an oval cinder track, with space enough in the middle to be the home of Stoke City F.C. The Bicycle club held its first races there the same year.11
    Further on, we find the Leek and Moorlands Club, formed in 1876. It changed its name to Leek Cyclists’ Club, and is still going strong. As always, the enthusiasts who joined clubs were a tiny minority of the millions who cycled, pretty much everywhere, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
    Along the A53, though, cyclists may not have had it all their own way because horse-drawn transport must have continued at both ends of the road. The reason: only Stoke and Leek had a direct railway connection, which began in 1867. No trains ever ran from Buxton to Leek, or Stoke-on-Trent to Shrewsbury. So it’s a good bet people used horses, carts, traps, and even carriages.

    Cars Begin to Arrive

    The Menely Cyclecar, 1920

    Cars took a time to arrive along the road.
    The Menley Motor Company12, in 1920, manufactured a ‘cyclecar’, between Newcastle and Etruria, on what would become the A52. It wasn’t a great success. They only built sixteen of them, and went out of business within the year.

    The Jen-Tug, built in Stoke-on-Trent between 1947 and 1951

    Starting in 1947, Jensen manufactured commercial vehicles at their Campbell Road works in Stoke13. They pioneered lighter vehicles, and made an early articulated lorry, the ‘Jen-Tug’. The move to Stoke was always intended to be temporary, so in 1951 they transferred to their new plant at Kingswinford in the West Midlands.

    Today’s Road

    The Nicholson Memorial Tower

    It turns out the A53 has been an unusually stable road. Coming off a mini-roundabout on the A6 in Buxton, it takes you up over the moors, and down towards Leek as the Romans, and the turnpikes did.
    The route through Leek doesn’t show you the best of the town, though you do pass the Memorial Tower, on the corner of Ball Haye Street and Ashbourne Road. It was built by Sir Arthur Nicholson in memory of his son, and the other sons of Leek, killed in the Great War.
    As you move on, apart from the bypass round Market Drayton which means you don’t see much of the town, the A53 stays close to the late eighteenth century route.

    Through Stoke along Leek New Road, from the 1840s, and on to Etruria Road, to go past the New Vic Theatre, there is a worrying moment when the sign for the Nelson Place Roundabout only offers the A53 heading back for Leek. Grit your teeth and follow the A34, and eventually, you are on your way to Shrewsbury.
    Of course, you never reach the town, for our road stops at the Battlefield Roundabout, where it meets the A49 from Ludlow to Whitchurch.

    So we see the A53 is a short road with much to say for itself. The next post will be about a longer road, which also has much history running along it: the A10

    1. Aquae Arnemetiae, Historic England Research Records, Heritage Gateway Website, https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=306059&resourceID=19191 ↩︎
    2. Ratledge, David, 2026, Derbyshire’s Roman Roads, Travelling with the Romans Website, https://www.twithr.co.uk/derbyshire/derbyshire.html ↩︎
    3. Shilston, Peter, G., 2018, The Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403,Peter G Shilston’s Blog
      https://petergshilstonsblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-battle-of-shrewsbury-1403.html ↩︎
    4. Pennant, Thomas, 1781, A Tour in Wales, Printed by Henry Hughes ↩︎
    5. Battle of Shrewsbury, BritishBattles.com, https://www.britishbattles.com/one-hundred-years-war/battle-of-shrewsbury/Battle ↩︎
    6. Historic England, 1994, English Heritage Battlefield Report: Blore Heath 1459, https://historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/listing/battlefields/blore-heath/ ↩︎
    7. Hunt, Tristram, 2021, The Radical Potter. Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain, Allen Lane ↩︎
    8. Rosevear, Alan, 2023, Turnpike Roads in England and Wales Website, http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/ ↩︎
    9. Wedgwood, Josiah, C., 1913. Staffordshire Pottery and Its History, Sampson, Low, Marston & Co. ↩︎
    10. Yates 1775 Map of North Staffordshire – Public domain old map, https://picryl.com/media/yates1775mapofnorthstaffordshire-b9d7e6 ↩︎
    11. Baxter, Tony, 2025. Stoke-on-Trent – Victoria Athletic Grounds, oldvelodromes.co.uk Website, https://oldvelodromes.co.uk/HTML%20tracks/804.html ↩︎
    12. Did You Know? – there was once a car manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent, thepotteries.org Website, https://www.thepotteries.org/did_you/015.htm ↩︎
    13. Jensen Motors – Pensnett Factory, Kingswinford, Jensen Museum Website, https://www.jensenmuseum.org/jensen-factory-pensnett-kingswinford/ ↩︎
  • The Land’s End Road: a history of the A30 – Part 2

    The Land’s End Road: a history of the A30 – Part 2


    In the previous post, we followed the history of the A30 to the end of the seventeenth century. This post is about what happened next.

    Daniel Defoe was making his Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain1 in the 1720s. He describes a trip to Land’s End, but how did he get there?

    On an earlier trip, he had waxed lyrical about the Thames at Staines, but when he eventually starts his journey to the South-West, he sets out from Hampton Court, so crosses the river at Chertsey. He made his way over Bagshot-Heath, then a bleak place, renowned, throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as a centre of highway robbery.
    Once safely at Basingstoke, he goes off to Winchester. Eventually, he does tip-up at Salisbury, then on to Shaftesbury, and pretty much follows our road to Exeter.
    After that, though, he abandons the A30, travelling round the south coast, through Dartmouth, and Plymouth. He arrives at Penzance, (which he spells with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’) via Helston.
    It looks as though he reached Land’s end along part of the A30, then the B3263. On his return trip he goes to Bodmin (Bodmyn) via St Ives, Redruth and Padstow, Once he makes Bodmin he seems to then follow the future A30 across the moor to reach Launceston. Once over the Tamar, he’s off along the north Devon coast, and that’s the last of any A30.

    The First Turnpike on the Land’s End Road

    The earliest turnpike along the road was the Kensington to Powder Mills and Cranford Bridge Trust from 1716. It’s all A315, which, as we saw in the last post, was always part of the Land’s End Road. In a way, the A315 might have been the A30, but it looks as though the ministry men wanted to tie the A30 to the A4, both significant routes to the West Country.

    The Kensington tollgate at the Bell and Anchor, in 1859, seen from the east side, 32 years after the trust was dissolved.
    In 1717, the gate had been at “the sign of the Robin Hood” perhaps a forerunner of the Bell and Anchor, which stood on the site of today’s Olympia near the junction with North End Road.

    The turnpike started at Couter’s Bridge, which carried the road over Couter’s Creek, one of London’s lost rivers. Today, the railway line running through Kensington (Olympia) station follows the line of the creek, at this point. The line of the turnpike then ran west, through Hammersmith, Chiswick, Brentford, and Hounslow. It finished at the Bedfont Powder Mill, on the western edge of Hounslow Heath, which was much larger at the time.

    The approximate line of the Kensington to Powder Mill turnpike.
    The Bedfont Powder Mill from an 1869 Ordnance Survey map

    The Powder Mill made Gunpowder, and has a long history. There is evidence of it being there around 1610. For a period, mid-century, it became a sword manufacturer, but returned to making “Black Powder” around 1655.
    It continued to make gunpowder until after the First Wold War.2 It is remembered today as Mill Way, a no-through-road lined with bungalows.

    Staines to Salisbury Turnpikes

    There were, at least eleven trusts between Staines and Salisbury.
    The one that ran from the Powder Mill went as far as Egham by 1727. It reached Bagshot ten years later. Then in 1809 the trust was split in two, with the section Egham to Bagshot becoming a separate turnpike, in it’s own right.
    From Basingstoke a turnpike followed the line of the A303 for a bit, but then went across country joining the route of today’s A30 at Sutton Scotney, about seven miles north-east of Stockbridge. It continued through Stockbridge to finish at Lopcombe Corner. Today, you turn left to keep on the A30. A right turn would put you on the A343, from Andover, which was the A30 until 1933.

    Turnpikes on from Salisbury to Exeter

    A discouraging road sign on the A30, on the way into Salisbury.

    Following the A30 through Salisbury is curious. You come in via the north-east corner and leave by the north-west corner. The sign before you join the ring-road at St Mark’s roundabout is not encouraging, only offering the A36 for either Southampton or Warminster. You are directed to the third exit, which feel counter-intuitive, but there is an A30 Shaftesbury sign. This oddness is not a result of modern planners, but an inheritance from the turnpikes.

    The Shaftesbury Drove joining the A30 near Donhead St Andrew, Wiltshire,


    There is an ancient route starting at Harnham, a south-western suburb of Salisbury, which today is a right of way along the edge of a beautiful chalk landscape. Eventually the path drops steeply down Whitesheet Hill to meet the A30 about five miles east of Shaftesbury.

    In 1756, a turnpike, the Whitesheet Hill to Harnham Hill, took over the management of this piece of road. It kept going for thirty years, despite the route being steep and hard to maintain.

    The route of the A30 around Salisbury, on the 1923 Ministry of Transport map

    What finally did for it was a new turnpike, begun in 1788 which ran along the easier ground of the valley. To achieve this its northern end ran off an existing turnpike, with a ridiculously long name,3 some six miles west of Salisbury, at Barford St Martin. The die was cast. In 1923, the MOT map shows the A30 taking precisely that route.
    Once the new turnpike, called the Whitesheet, was up and running, the rest of the way was pretty straightforward. On the map above, a turnpike, the Sherborne to Axminster, is shown, but it soon divided into four trusts which took the road across Somerset. The Honiton Turnpike is not all A30, though the Exeter is.

    Exeter to Land’s End Turnpikes

    By 1760, two turnpikes were in place maintaining the road from Exeter, through Okehampton to Launceston. It took another nine years before the old pack-horse road across Bodmin Moor got a turnpike.

    Beyond Bodmin, even after the turnpike arrived, things were complicated. There was no direct route to Penzance for fifty years. Instead, you joined a turnpike, for a few miles, which had gone through Camelford, then run along the north coast, to avoid Bodmin Moor. That fed you onto the Truro Turnpike, and you had to go all the way to Falmouth, before cutting across country to Helston, and on to Penzance.
    Eventually, in 1825, the Hayle Bridge Causeway arrived, which took the road over the Hayle river, and from there into Penzance. It’s not quite today’s A30, but close. Very late on, a turnpike was opened, from Penzance to St Just, though none of it was A30.

    Coaches Along the A30

    From Cary’s Itinerary, 1798, giving the road between Stockbridge and Salisbury.

    If you hunt around, it’s possible to piece together most of our A30 route in Cary’s 1798 Itinerary,4 though none of the three versions he offers gives us the entire modern road. His main route goes through Andover, just as the road did in 1923. However, he does offer an alternative, which is more the modern A30, going via Stockbridge.
    In the 1828 edition we find the Royal Mail leaves the Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane, London. It took twenty-two hours to reach Exeter, going via, Andover, Salisbury, Blandford, and Dorchester.
    Beyond Exeter, though, with turnpikes south of Bodmin in place, Redruth, Camborne Church, and Angarrack, at the foot of the charming named Steamers Hill, are all listed. Next we have the River Hayle crossing, then on to Crowlas, to reach Penzance, all A30.
    However, we can’t be sure coaches ran from London to Penzance. The London Stage Coach Directory, section of the Itinerary list six coaches a day heading out to Exeter. A note under the Phoenix,5 tells us, from Exeter coaches run to Plymouth, Falmouth, Penryn, Truro, Bodmin etc. Perhaps the ‘etc.’ covered Penzance, but perhaps not.

    Bolt-in-Tun sign, Fleet Street

    Just to add a further complication, William Hanning, the chief engineer of the Ilminster Turnpike Trust, made an alternative, fast coaching route between London and Exeter around 1800. His New Direct Route, left the A30 after Basingstoke, to go via Andover, over Salisbury Plane, past Stonehenge, to Wincanton and Ilchester, joining the original route a little north of Honiton. Cary tells us that in 1828 The Subscription Coach left the Bolt-in-Tun inn, Fleet Street, every day to go along the New Road to Exeter. Other coaches, such as, Quicksilver and New Exeter Mail also used the route. Of course it was never A30, but a certainly version of the Land’s End road.

    Jamaica Inn

    About halfway between Launceston and Bodmin, at the village of Bolventor, was an inn, built, in 1750, by an important Cornish landowning family, the Trelawneys. It was originally called New Inn, which hints at there being an older pub on the site, probably dating from the sixteenth century.
    Once the turnpike arrived, it was a natural stop for coaches. In the late 1770s it was renamed Jamaica Inn, in deference to the Trelawneys, who were Governors of Jamaica. It was made famous by Daphne du Maurier using it for her 1936 novel of wrecking, smuggling, and a clergyman of dubious character. Today it is a thirty-six bedroom hotel and restaurant, though it, and the village of Bolventor, were bypassed in 1991.

    The impact of the Railways

    We’re at the high-water mark of coaching days because the railways were coming. They didn’t arrive all at once along the A30, but by 1844 there was a train service between London and Exeter. You could take a train from Plymouth to Launceston by 1865, but a direct line to London was not in place until 1886, and the connection to Bodmin had to wait until 1888. Inevitably, over time, long-distance travel between London and Cornwall moved from coach to train.

    Inevitably, over time, long-distance travel between London and Cornwall moved from coach to train. As with many roads in that era, the A30 was used to reach the nearest station, for local journeys, and later, by cyclists. Bike clubs were founded at Exeter and Launceston in the 1870s, Salisbury in 1885, and Basingstoke in 1892. Most cyclists didn’t join a club, they rode them to work, to go into the village, to take a message to the doctor, or just for the pleasure of a jaunt with friends.

    Hardy Country

    Thomas Hardy, 1893

    Thomas Hardy’s novels appeared in the 1870s through to 1895. The A30 runs through his Wessex, itself, an echo of Alfred the Great’s kingdom. Even if the road keeps north of Alfred’s capital, Winchester, (Casterbridge in the books), stretches carry a Hardyesque feel.

    The sunken road running down the hill into Wesk Coker.

    There’s the sunken lane as you come to West Coker (Narrowbourne in Hardy), with its Post Office on the corner of East Street, and Church Street to your right, taking you to the lychgate of St Martin’s. On, between wooded slopes, which open up to rolling downs to the south, with their field patchwork, then down the hill into East Chinnock, past set-back stone houses, half hidden among greenery. You arrive at Crewkerne along another, perhaps, green lane, with the glimpse of the town laid out before you. Amid the warm stone of the town, where King Ethelred had coins struck, it is possible to imagine you might catch a glimpse of a Tess Durbeyfield, Giles Winterborne, or Bathsheba Everdene.

    The Royal Military College, Sandhurst

    Royal Military College,Sndhurst

    In 1812, the Junior Department of the Military College, which had been established at Great Marlow in 1802, moved into new buildings at Sandhurst. The senior section joined them some years later.
    In 1947, the site became the Royal Military College, universally known as Sandhurst. Thus, for two hundred years, young men, and from 1984, young women, would have been up and down the road between Bagshot and Blackwater. A mile of the A30, along Camberley High Street forms the south-eastern boundary of the College, so no doubt, future military leaders would have known the road pretty well.

    Trevethick’s ‘Puffing Devil’

    Replica of Trevethic’s ‘Puffing Devil’, 2017

    Two milestones along the path of the arrival of self-powered vehicles are found along the A30.
    The first happened in Cambourne, five miles south-west of Redruth. On Christmas Eve, 1801, Richard Trevithick ran his “Puffing Devil,” a steam powered, passenger carrying, vehicle up Camborne Hill. Onlookers were astonished.

    ‘The horses stood still,
    The wheels went round,
    Going up Camborne Hill coming down.’

    Central Camborne, showing Fore Street and Commercial Street. © Openstreetmaps

    There is a plaque on the wall just where Fore Street meets Commercial Street, which was the A30 until a bypass arrived in 1975. Though “Puffing Devil” only made one successful run, it was the progenitor of the traction engine, the steam lorry, and the whole notion of an automotive road vehicle. Yes, we had to wait for the internal combustion engine, but the idea was abroad.

    The First Motor Car Import.

    The second milestone was passed ninety-four years later, and it involved a car with an internal combustion engine.

    the Honourable Evelyn Ellis in his prize Panhard-Levassour

    In July 1895, the Honourable Evelyn Ellis collected his Panhard-Levassor from Micheldever Station, a little south of today’s A303. It was the first car to be imported into Britain, having arrived at Southampton two days earlier.
    Ellis drove his prize to Basingstoke where he picked up the line of the, not yet arrived, A30. He was heading for his home in Datchet, between Windsor and Slough. He stayed on the the A30 beyond Bagshot, before turning north for Ascot, Windsor, and Datchet.
    Given his class, and temperament, he didn’t feel the need to worry about the four mile an hour speed limit. (It was claimed he reached at least twenty mph.) Nor did he bother with the law requiring a man, carrying a red flag, to walk in front of him, to alert oncoming horses and their riders.

    Other Early Cars Along the A30

    People up and down the A30 tried their hand at cars.

    The Yeovil Motor Carriage of 1897

    The Yeovil Motor Carriage Company began making small two-person motor carriages in 1897. They were well named as they were clearly converted carriages, with no space for horses. The business only lasted two years.
    In Exeter William Shepherd and his sons built a car in 1899, and went on to open W. Shepherd and Son, Motor Car manufacturers & Repairers, in 1901.6 I wonder how many cars they actually repaired in their first few years? They were successful enough, however, to have continued in the city into the 1950s.

    The first car in Exeter, a Benz, came with the circus in 1896 or 7. The brewer John Evony Norman was the first man in the city to get a numberplate, in 1903, the year the Motor Car Act was passed. His number, FJ1 was joined by eight other registrations by the end of the year.

    A Thornycroft Type J (Restored by Tomo. T)

    In Basingstoke, the Thornycroft Steam Wagon Company Ltd arrived from Chiswick, in 1898, where from 1903 to 1912 they manufactured high-end motorcars. What they were best known for, however, were commercial vehicles.
    Their Type J, 4 ton lorry, gained a reputation for reliability and durability during WW1. The company continued making a range of large vehicles at Basingstoke until 1972.
    Along the road at Salisbury, a firm called Dean and Burden produced the ‘Scout’ car. They changed their name to Scout Motors in 1906, eventually producing fifteen hundred cars before they folded in 1921.

    The Road gets a Number

    1923 Ministry of Transport Map showing the A30 going through Andover

    All of these enterprising concerns were started before there was an A30. But it did arrive, in 1923. The MoT map shows the road, west of Basingstoke, running along what is now the B3400 to Andover then along the A343 to Lopcombe Corner, where it joined today’s A30 once more. From there on it’s basically the modern A30, except, no bypasses, it simply ploughs through Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Yeovil and Exeter. Back then, the road south-west from Exeter, took you through Okehampton and Launceston, where today it is not so much a question of bypasses, as a complete realignment of the road.
    After Launceston, the 1923 road was much as today’s, if a bit wigglier. Of course, it went past Jamaica Inn and through the centre of Bodmin, emerging via what is now the A389 through Lanivet, before rejoining the modern A30. All the towns and villages the A30 once went through are now bypassed. Some of those bypasses, such as the first one round Redruth date back to the 1940s. It was upgraded when Camborne was bypassed in 1975, and a bypass round Hayle arrived in 1984. Originally, the A30 finished at Penzance, but not for long. In 1925, the green 3318 (no letters in 1923, ‘B’ roads were green) became the A30.

    The Alternative to theA30: the A303

    Of course, the road wasn’t to be left alone, and 1933 saw a major rearrangement. Summer traffic was already beginning to be a problem, so the planners created the A303 as an alternative route between Basingstoke and Exeter. You may search in vain for the 303 on the 1923 map, for it wasn’t there.

    The A303 and the A30.

    The new-made road mostly followed William Hanning’s eighteenth century New Direct Route, including some seriously old ways around Stone Henge. We are not doing the A303 here, but anyone who is interested should read Tom Fort’s highly entertaining, and well-informed book The A303: Highways to the Sun.

    All I will say is, for generations, the trip across Salisbury Plain, past the ancient standing-stones, was part of the whole business of going on holiday.
    The rearrangement had an impact on the A30. Instead of going to Andover, from Basingstoke it followed the A303 as far as Micheldever Station, where it forks left, for Egypt and Stockbridge, while the A303 forks right towards Andover. On a 1951 Bartholomew map, the A30 is shown as continuing along, what is now, the unclassified Stockbridge Road, to Sutton Scotney. From there on, it’s Stockbridge, and so on to Salisbury.

    A Shy Road

    On modern maps, between Basingstoke and Honiton, the A30 seems surprisingly coy. It’s there, but you have to look for it. To be fair, when you find it, it’s not a swift drive, but that’s the point. If you’re in a hurry, there’s the M4/M5 route. Though, if you are looking for a pleasant trip though a particular version of English countryside, with echos of Alfred the Great, and Thomas Hardy, the A30’s as good a road as any.
    Dip off the bypasses to take in Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Yeovil, and the other pretty towns the road once served. Beyond Exeter, you can get a move on, provided you avoid peak holiday season. Launceston, Bodmin, and Penzance all fine A30 towns, and worth stopping off for. Indeed, much of the road offers the feel of a way that has been travelled through the long arc of time.

    1. Defoe, Daniel, 1724 to 1727. A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, George Strahan London ↩︎
    2. Philo, Phil, and Mills, John, The Bedfont Gunpowder Mills, https://www.wargm.org/WASC/Files/wasc_1525_00.pdf ↩︎
    3. It was called the Fisherton, Wilton, Heytesbury, Willoughby Hedge & Redhone Turnpike Trust, 1761. ↩︎
    4. Cary, John, 1789, Cary’s New Itinerary, Printed for John Cary, 181 Strand London. ↩︎
    5. Cary John, 1828, Cary’s New Itinerary, Printed for John Cary, 181 Strand London. ↩︎
    6. W. Shepherd and Son, Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/W._Shepherd_and_Son ↩︎
  • The Land’s End Road: a history of the A30 – Part 1

    The Land’s End Road: a history of the A30 – Part 1

    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

    A Beach near Penzance

    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

    Routes offer by Google Maps for London to Land’s End

    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.

    A section of William Morgan’s Map of of the Whole of London, 1662

    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.

    Map sowing the connections between the A30, the A4 and the A315

    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

    Part of the display of items, including Cornish tin ingots, found in a Bronze Age shipwreck excavated off the coast of Turkey

    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

    The vine, as it may have looked in 1535

    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.

    Glowing fuses left behind by the Parliamentary troops

    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

    Drawing of John Paulet, with Basing House behind.

    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

    Ogilby’s Land’s End Road diversion from Chard through Axminster, to Honiton

    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.

    1. 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 ↩︎
    2. 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/] ↩︎
    3. 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/ ↩︎
    4. Dickins, L, 1938. Premonstratensian Itineraries from a Titchfield Abbey MS. at Welbeck Proceedings, Leeds Philosophical Soc., 349-61. ↩︎
    5. 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 ↩︎
    6. Smith, Lucy, Toulmin, 1909. The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the years 1535 – 1543, George Bell and Sons, London ↩︎
    7. 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 ↩︎
    8. Fiennes, Celia, 1888. Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary, Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, E.C. ↩︎