Tag: Manchester

  • A57 History Part 2: Manchester to Lincoln

    A57 History Part 2: Manchester to Lincoln

    A57 History Part 2: Manchester to Lincoln

    In the previous post, I traced the development of the A57, from Liverpool, to the point where the Hyde Road leaves Manchester. In this one, I will look at the rest of the road, through Glossop, Sheffield, Worksop, and so to Lincoln.

    Finding a Road

    It is difficult to find evidence for any A57 road between Manchester and Glossop, until the coming of stagecoaches. The Romans had a road (Margary no. 711) running from a fort in Castlefield, a district south-west of Manchester city centre, to another, known as Melandra, between Woolley Bridge and Glossop.1 The latest evidence points to the Roman road running north of the A57, but parallel to it, so going in the right general direction. However, beyond Glossop it went off towards Barnsley and Doncaster.

    Manchester to Glossop showing approximate line of the Roman road, and the route stagecoaches took before 1818

    If we jump forward to the end of the eighteenth century, coaches from Manchester to Sheffield were going through Glossop, but via Ashton Underline, more the A6018 than the A57. It could have something to do with Hyde not being there until the early nineteenth century. However, by 1818, the Manchester Hyde and Mottram Turnpike went to Glossop.

    Glossop to Sheffield

    The route of the Snake Pass, now the A57, and the two, older, turnpikes routes between Glossop and Sheffield.

    Beyond Glossop, Sheffield bound coaches either took the Woodhead Pass (A 628) or the more southerly route, through Chapel-en-le-Frith, over the Winnats Pass, then along the Hope Valley. Neither of these routes is particularly direct.

    Dukes Devonshire and Norfolk, who financed the building of the Snake Pass, and so laid down the route for th
    e future A57.

    In 1818, the Duke of Norfolk, the Lord of the Manor of both Sheffield and Glossop, got together with the Duke of Devonshire, who owned the land in between. They hatched a notion to build a new road, along the line of a packhorse trail, known as Doctor’s Gate.
    It was a rash decision. For a start, building an entirely new road, not just improving an existing one, was rare. In addition, the terrain was unforgiving, making the construction difficult and expensive. A Sheffield surveyor, William Fairbank, was initially given the task, but when he was obviously floundering, John McAdam was brought in to finish the job, at some expense, I’m sure.

    The Cavendish family crest, which gave the Snake Pass its name.

    The origin of the name, Snake Pass, might refer to the wiggly nature of the road, but it did not. As part of their Lordships’ plan, an inn was built, about seven miles from Glossop, for coaches to stop. It was originally called The Ladyclough Inn, but the Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, put his family crest, a knotted serpent, over the front door. It was not long before one-and-all called the place the Snake Inn, and the name attached itself to the whole stretch of road.
    The 1828 edition of Cary’s New Itinerary, gives the Royal Mail, from Sheffield to Manchester, going on the new Line of Road through Glossop,2 which we can suppose was the A57, Snake Pass route.

    A view along the Snake Pass

    It’s doubtful that their Lordships ever got their money back, because twenty-three years later, the Manchester to Sheffield railway line opened, killing the coaching trade. They did, however, give us the Snake Pass, a gem of a drive. From Glossop, it takes you over the high ground between the moorland plateaux of Kinder Scout and Bleaklow to the Ladybower Reservoir. Its highest point, one thousand six-hundred and eighty feet, is where it crosses the Pennine Way.
    The opening of this Snake Pass route meant there was a direct road between Glossop and Sheffield, now called the A57.

    Through Sheffield

    Before the 1960s Inner Ring Road was built, the A57 came into Sheffield along Glossop Road, which is now the B6547. It then went straight through the centre of Sheffield, past the cathedral and along some of the city’s oldest streets such as Haymarket, Waingate and Wicker.

    The original route of the A57 through Sheffield.

    One-way systems, and redevelopment, mean, today, you can’t drive the 1923 route, over Lady’s Bridge, and out of the city along Staniforth Road, now the B6200. Quite sensibly, the modern route keeps cars away from the centre, directing traffic north of the city, via the A61, to pick up the A 57 as the Sheffield Parkway.

    Steel Town

    A late medieval Sheffield made knife

    The ancient street names are a clue to how long metal has been worked in the city. Robertus le Coteler, one of Sheffield’s early little mesters, paid Hearth Tax in 1297 for the workshops he owned, which produced knives, swords, and other bladed tools.3
    In The Canterbury Tales, the Reeve says of a miller:
    ‘Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche.
    A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.    ‘
    For ‘thwitel’, read ‘knife‘, which gives us the modern word whittle. So, even at the end of the fourteenth century, it was noted that the knife was made in Sheffield. By 1379, twenty-five percent of the population of Sheffield were listed as metal-workers.
    It was the beginning of ‘Steel Town’ Sheffield becoming the world-renown producer of fine cutlery. Not knives and forks alone, though, but steel for armaments and railways. Ingenuity and quality have always been the stamp of Sheffield, and though the industry was filleted during the 1980s, firms producing high quality steel hang on, drawing on centuries of skill and nous.

    A Castle and a Queen

    A romantic rendering of how Sheffield Castle may have looked, in its day.

    A castle once stood east of Waingate. The original motte and bailey structure burnt down in 1266, as did much of the town, during Henry III’s struggle with Simon de Montfort. It was rebuilt in stone in the 1270s.
    In November 1570, Mary Queen of Scots, then aged 27, arrived there, having travelled from Chatsworth. Little did she think she would stay in Sheffield, on and off, for fourteen years.

    Manor Lodge, Sheffield

    To begin with, Mary was kept in the castle, but later, more comfortably, at Manor Lodge, which still stands.
    The castle, though, did not survive the Civil war. Seized by Royalists in 1643, it was battered by Parliamentary artillery in 1644.4 Three years later, the House of Commons ordered its demolition. The Earl of Arundel did, at one time, have a scheme to restore it, but the damage was too extensive, and finally, the remains were levelled.

    On to Worksop

    There is little, or no, record of a road from Sheffield to Worksop in the Middle Ages, or the early modern period. Worksop is probably of Saxon origin, for it is in Domesday. There was a minor, Wars of the Roses, skirmish there, in December 1460.
    During Henry VIII’s reign, Leland visited the town, but tells us nothing of a road to Sheffield, as he came from Doncaster, and went on to Mansfield.

    Mary Queen of Scots as a younger woman

    There must have been some sort of highway, because, in the summer of 1583, during her imprisonment at Sheffield, Mary Queen of Scots was taken to Worksop Manor for a time. The house burnt down in 1761. An eighteenth century mansion was built on the site, albeit only one wing of what was planned.

    The Worksop to Attercliffe turnpike, was in place from 1764, and by 1798, Cary outlines a road between Sheffield and Worksop, which looks very like the A57 of 1923.5 Coming out of Sheffield it goes along the B6200 as far as Swallownest, which was the line of the A57 until the 1970s. After that, it is pretty much the A57 into Worksop.

    The 1923 route of the A57

    Of course, nowadays, you can’t drive the original route of the A57 through Worksop. Where the modern road swings almost due south at a roundabout three-quarters of a mile outside the town, you follow the signs for Kilton, Tickhill and Blyth. The B6041, Gateford Road is the way the A57 once ran. Because Bridge Street is pedestrianised, you have to go around the houses, then along the B6040 Retford Road to pick up the A57. The A60 remains the one ‘A’ road through Worksop, coming up from Loughbough and heading for Doncaster.

    The Coming of Coal

    The Prince of Wales visit to Shireoak Colliery, November 1861

    A little to the north-west of the A57, the Duke of Newcastle began sinking the first shafts of the Shireoaks Colliery. It was the catalyst that changed Worksop from a market town, where they grew liquorice, made hats, and Windsor chairs, to a coal producing, industrial centre.
    Though Worksop is in Nottinghamshire, its four pits, Shireoaks, Steetley, Manton, and Firbeck have always been regarded as South Yorkshire collieries. Over the years, the Worksop miners played their part in national mining disputes, culminating in the strike of 1984/5. Despite a majority in Nottinghamshire voting to continue working, men from Shireoaks and Manton supported the struggle.

    The Manton Colliery Memorial

    The Shireoaks pit hung on until 1990. The last Workshop pit, Manton, closed in 1994, bringing an end to a hundred and fifty years of winning coal in the area.

    A Road to Lincoln

    The real fun starts the far side of Worksop.
    There was never a direct turnpike road between Worksop and Markham Moor. However, from 1822 there was a turnpike running east from Worksop to Retford, (then known as East Retford). At Retford you could pick up the Bawtry and East Markham Common Turnpike, opened in 1766, which ran south down part of the Great North Road. That turnpike took you to East Markham, from where the Dunham Road Trust, opened in 1765, ran to Dunham Ferry, where it connected with the earlier Lincoln Northwest District Turnpike, from Dunham Ferry to Lincoln.

    Turnpike routes between Worksop and Lincoln.

    By the end of the nineteenth century maps give a road running north-west from Markham Moor, which, beyond Elkesley, is marked Worksop Road. This must be the road which was the basis of the route the ministry men chose for the A57, though it was never a turnpike.

    Elkesley and the A1 Changes

    Elkesley was a victim of the wanderings of the A1.
    In 1923, the A57 ran through Elkesley and West Drayton, crossing the A1 at Markham Moor. As I covered in a previous post, in 1961, the Doncaster bypass arrived. As a result, The A1, which originally went from Markham Moor to Retford, to reach Blyth, was rerouted to go through Elkesley and Upper Morton, that is, along a stretch of A57. When the A1 was duelled in 1967, Elkesley found itself stranded, with only one way to join, or leave, the high-speed road. A bridge and new junctions were finally constructed in 2015. A second result is that the A57 temporally abandons its identity between Upper Markham and Markham Moor, and the A1.

    On to Lincoln

    This Chain Ferry is from further down the River Trent at Walkerith, though the one from Dunham to Newton must have been similar.

    Once the road reaches Markham Moor, and becomes the A57 again, the road follows a well-trodden path.
    East of Dunham, you have to cross the Trent to leave Nottinghamshire and enter Lincolnshire. Until 1832, that meant taking the chain ferry, which had been there for centuries. Eventually, a group of businessmen had a bridge built, with a toll paid to cross. It was not replaced until the end of the 1970s, and even then, the original piers were kept. The tolls, 50p a car, are to pay for their replacement when the time comes.
    Once over the river, you skirt Newton on Trent, continuing to the charmingly named Drinsey Nook Junction, where you turn right for Lincoln.

    A view along part of the Foss Dyke

    For a while, the road runs beside the Foss Dyke. We are not sure who built this ancient waterway, but it is likely the Romans had a hand in it. It joins the Trent, at Torksey Lock, where a small bronze statue of the Roman God Mars was found in the eighteenth century.
    If the Romans built that end, did they take it all the way to Brayford Pool in Lincoln, where they already had an inland port? The documentary evidence suggests Henry I may have been involved in part of its construction, or perhaps its reclamation.6 The canal certainly has a ‘straight’ Roman feel about it.
    As you come into Lincoln, you pick up the Carholm Road. Since 2017, the A57 was routed, via a right turn at the end of Carholm Road, onto Brayford Way, which was built in the 1990s. It takes you back over the Foss Dyke, catching a glimpse of Brayford Pool. From there the road runs along a series of streets, Rope Walk, St Mark’s Street, Tentercroft Street, and the East West Link Road. It then goes under a flyover, round a long, right-hand loop, to the junction with the A1434, where today’s A57 ends.

    The A57 through Lincoln, today, and how it went in 1923.

    Of course, that was not how the road originally went. Until the High Street was pedestrianised, from the end of Carholm Road, the A57 kept, more or less straight, going along Newland. It then seemed to have then gone along Mint Street, to join the A15 on the High Street, just by the Stonebow, once the entrance to the city’s Guildhall. Even by 1923 theA15 no longer followed the line of the Roman road along the High Street.

    The A57 is a curious road, in many respects, but so are many of our roads. Lincoln to Liverpool, Liverpool to Lincoln, it seems unlikely, but there it is, weaving a route from the industrial North-west to an ancient city, founded by the Romans. As we saw at the beginning of the previous post, it links the lost pool in Liverpool to the ancient Brayford Pool. A road between two pools.

    1. Margary, Ivan, D., 1973 Roman Roads in Britain: Written by Edition, (3rd Revised edition), J. Baker ↩︎
    2. Cary, John, 1828, Cary’s New Itinerary, Printed for John Cary, No. 181 Strand ↩︎
    3. Unwin, Margaret, Joan, 2002 The Hallamshire Cutlery Trades in the late 17th century: a study of the Hearth Tax returns and the records of the Cutlers’ Company, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield ↩︎
    4. Civil War and the Fall of Sheffield Castle, 2020, Libraries Sheffield Blog, https://shefflibraries.blogspot.com/2020/04/civil-war-and-fall-of-sheffield-castle.html ↩︎
    5. Cary, John, 1798, Cary’s Itinerary Printed for John Cary, No. 181 Strand ↩︎
    6. Fossdyke Navigation, Canal and River Trust Website, https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/canals-and-rivers/fossdyke-navigation ↩︎
  • A57 History Part 1: A Road Between Two Pools

    A57 History Part 1: A Road Between Two Pools

    The A57 is too long, interesting and varied, to be crammed into one post, so this is the first of two.

    Early map of Liverpool

    Why two pools? No problem with Liverpool, it is in the name, and there was a pool. More of an inlet from the Mersey, really, but it offered protection from the westerlies and raiders. So, when King John was on the lookout for a base from which to continue his attempt to conquer Ireland, ‘The Pool’ looked just the job.
    He gave the, then, town its first charter, and laid out the orignal seven streets.

    King John’s original sevn Liverpool streets.

    Lincoln though, what about the pool there?
    Well, there is one; always was one. We knew it as the Brayford Pool.
    When the Romans arrived, it was already an established site, possibly of some ritual significance, with archaeological evidence of offerings and Iron Age activity. It may have been called Lindon, from Lin, or Lindo, meaning a pool in the British (Bythonic) dialect spoken around there.
    For the Romans, it was an ideal site. They could bring ships along the River Witham from the Wash, to develop The Pool as the country’s first inland port. Immediately to the north, was a hill, which simply cried out to be a fort, so they built one. Pretty quickly, the place became a major administrative centre. By about 90 CA, it achieved the status of Colonia, a top-ranking town where retired legionnaires could live. They kept the Lin connection, and called their town, Lindum Colonia, ‘Pool Town’.1 So, you see, there is, indeed, a pool at each end of the A57.

    Setting Off

    Water Street, Dale Street and Queensway today – © Openstreetmap

    Back to Liverpool’s first seven streets. Water Street (known as Bank Street until the 1520s) is one of them. It runs east, from behind The Royal Liver and the Cunard Buildings, two of the Pierhead’s iconic ‘Three Graces’. The 1923 Ministry of Transport map had the A57 begin there. It carried on down Dale Street, another of King John’s original seven, then out towards Prescot, Warrington and onto Salford and Manchester.
    Water Street was the scene of a horrific event, on August Bank Holiday Monday, 2025. A man drove his car into a crowd of Liverpool supporters celebrating their team winning the Premier League. Seventy-nine people, including children, were injured, some seriously. It was a dreadfully, modern phenomenon unfolding in one of the city’s oldest streets.
    Nowadays, if you are coming from Manchester, or much less likely, Lincoln, the A57 ends at the top of Water Street. Trying to start from there, however, is a different matter, because it’s all one way.

    The London Road Confusion – © Openstreetmap

    Even looking at the map later, I’m not sure how I got to the A57, London Road, at all. At one point it appears to go along a ‘Pedestrian Zone’. I think I followed the A5047, also called London road. It took me left and right, and presto, I was on the A57 for real.
    From then on the road dutifully took me on through Prescott. (Avoid the M57 – it’s a false friend.) Now comes about five miles of pleasant, country road, with glimpses of wheat and barley behind hedges, as you head for Warrington. Leaving Warrington, the A57 becomes the Manchester Road, as it probably has been for centuries

    A Curious Road

    At first glance, the A57 looks to be two distinct roads which share a number. Liverpool, through Manchester and on to Sheffield, yes, you can see how they go together. But Sheffield to Lincoln? You have to ask what the civil servants in the Ministry of Transport were thinking in 1923?

    View of the Manton Colliery

    It begins to make more sense when we remember that the Manton Pit opened, at Worksop, in 1907. For the railway minded men from the ministry, their instinct was to follow the rails. Thus, Sheffield to Worksop seemed a natural continuation of the A57. But, Worksop was not on the main-line, and that would never do. Lincoln, however, was something of a railway hub at the time, so they thought they’d send the A57 there.
    That is my theory, anyway.

    Ageing the A57

    The number A57 was attached to an existing road, or, more likely, a series of roads right at the start of the road numbering system. What can we glean about how it got started?
    All the major settlements at the western end of the road were there when the Normans came. As we have seen, Liverpool, which must have been arround since Saxon times, came into formal existence, thanks to King John, in 1207. Once places are there, people make tracks to travel between them which leave no record. As a result, we have no evidence of where these early highways were.

    Section of the Gough Map with modern names. Remember the map is laid out with East at the top.
    © Linda Godden 2019-2026

    The first hint of there being a road from Liverpool to Manchester comes from the Gough Map, drawn sometime between 1350 and 1410.
    Liverpool, Prescot, Warrington, and Manchester are there in the right order, at the right distance apart, strongly suggesting there was some sort of road: a fledgling A57.
    Sheffield and Lincoln are also on the map, but none of the settlements along the line of the road, which likely means, there was no highway of any significance.
    The next snippet of evidence, for the westerly end of the road, comes from the second quarter of the sixteenth century with the Itineraries of John Leland. Of Liverpool, Leland says:

    ‘At Lyrpole is smaule custume payid that causith marchantes to resorte. Good marchandis at Lyrpole, and moch Yrisch yarn that Manchester men do by ther.’2

    John Leland

    If Manchester men were going to the market at Liverpool in the 1530s or 40s, it suggested there was a well-trodden highway between the two. Leland seems to have followed it as far as Warrington, but then, true to form, he went off to Wigan.

    The English Civil Wars

    A cartoon of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, from a Parliamentary pamflet.


    In 1642, just after the start of the First English Civil War, there was a major siege and battle around what is now the Victoria Bridge, in Manchester. At the time it was the Old Salford Bridge, which dated from the fourteenth century. However, that particular struggle is more part of the A6’s story than the A57’s.
    A year later, Parliamentary troops marched from Manchester to Liverpool, presumably along the line of the A57, to occupy the city, (then a town). The following year, Prince Rupert took it back, but most of the Parliamentary troops escaped across the Mersey. Later in the year, after a savage three-month siege, Liverpool was retaken for Parliament. And, that is how matters remained for the rest of the war.

    John Ogilby, Silvia Fiennes and Daniel Defoe

    Part of Ogilby’s map of the road from York to West Chester.

    Fifteen years after the restoration of Charles II, John Ogilby produced his beautiful book of road maps, Britannia. It only gives a short section of the A57 as part of the map from York to West Chester [Plate 89]. He shows the road going through Manchester, and Eccles, with a turning to Trafford marked. He continues through Irlam, (Erlam Green), Cadishead (Caddyhed), Hollins Green (Hollin Green), taking him to Warrington.3 All very much the basic route of the A57. Once at Warrington, Ogilby turned south into Cheshire.
    Nonetheless, we can imagine, if that piece of our A57 was in place, it would most likely have continued through Prescot to Liverpool.

    From the end of the seventeenth comes Celia Fiennes, who chose to ride around the land, observing as she went. She arrived at Liverpool by water, then went ‘7 very long miles, but pretty good way, mostly Lanes,’4 to Prescot, from where, like Leland, she headed off to Wigan.

    Celia Fiennes was on her ‘Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary‘, but in the reign of the first George, Daniel Defoe tells us that ‘the cross-country post route went by West Chester to Liverpool and Warrington, from whence it turns away east, and passes to Manchester.’5 The route, more or less the A57, seemed well established, though the mails were still carried on horseback. There was no mail coach along the road until the 1770s.

    Turnpikes

    About the time Defoe’s last volume of A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, was published, turnpike trusts began to be established.
    We get a flavour of the state of the road at the time from the submission made by the sponsors of one of the trusts:

    ‘(‘T)he Road….is very much used in the Carriage of Coals to Liverpoole, and also from Liverpoole (sic.) to…Manchester, and …. in the Carriage of Wool, Cotton, Malt, and all other Merchants Goods; whereby several Parts of the said Road are so very deep, and other Parts so narrow, that Coaches, Waggons, and other Wheel-carriages, cannot pass through.’6

    The first turnpike, in 1726, oversaw the road from Liverpool to Prescot. It was extended to Warrington in 1753, to become the Liverpool, Prescot, Ashton, Warrington Trust. The same year, the Warrington to Lower Irlam turnpike pushed the road east. There was then a forty-year lull. The next section, improving the road as far as the middle of Eccles, did not arrive until 1793, with the final stretching to central Manchester not coming until 1805.

    The route of the turnpikes between Liverpool and Manchseter, with some modern roads: the basic plan of theA57

    Stagecoaches

    A stagecoach service, between Liverpool and Manchester, began in 1767, running three days a week. Despite some ‘improved’ stretches of turnpike, the journey took all day.

    ‘The coach was accustomed to start early in the morning from Liverpool; it breakfasted at Prescot, dined at Warrington, and arrived at Manchester usually in time for supper.’7

    It is not clear When postboys were finally replaced by coaches, but, from 1798 a coach ran between Liverpool and Hull, along something like the A57 route as far as Manchester.
    To my mind, it was a more logical route, connecting Liverpool and Manchester to Leeds, York, and Hull: a bit like today’s M62, and a proper coast-to-coast route. But, it was not how the A57 was destined to go.
    That coach, though, was still running in 1828.8

    Dale Street Liveerpool in the 1840s

    At the height of the coaching boom, coaches from Liverpool,

    ‘rattled out (of Dale Street) from the Saracen’s Head or The Angel. Besides these inns there were in the street The Golden Lion, The Angel and Crown, The Bull and Punch Bowl, The Wool Pack, The Fleece, and others.‘9

    Manchester coaches left from The Sun Inn, on Deansgate, and The Mosley Arms, on the Market Place, The Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms, at the corner of Mosley Street, Piccadilly.

    In Salford, The King’s Arms still stands on Bloom street, though on the opposite side of the road from where it started in 1807. In its time, it was a thriving coaching inn with four coaches a day, the Enterprise, Dispatch, Express and Perseverance, setting out for Liverpool. Today it’s pub, but more than that, with a theatre upstairs and a Monday evening sewing bee.

    The King’s Arms coaches did not need to cross the Irwell, though there had been a bridge between Salford and Manchester since at least 1386. The Old Bridge, or Old Salford Bridge was dismantled in 1837, to rise again, in 1839, as the Victoria Bridge, which is still there, taking the A56 over the river.
    The Regent Bridge, which carries the A57 today, was not built until 1808. It is unlikely coaches used it. There is a certain conservatism about such things, so drivers probably continued to take their passengers over the Salford Bridge.

    The Coming of the Railways and After

    A tagedy marred the razzmatazz of the opening of Liverpool to Manchester railway in 1830. The MP for Liverpool, William Huskisson, a vocal supporter of the railway, was killed by a train coming in the opposite direction.
    As the railways took over, the road was left to farm carts, light carriages, and bicycles, which means we lose sight of it until 1923 when the numbering scheme began.

    You can just about work out how the A57 crossed Manchester in 1923. Having come over the Irwell by the Regent Bridge, you would have turned left into Water Street (now a right turn, off Trinity Way), then a right onto Liverpool Road. At the far end it was left into Deansgate. Not now, it’s all one-way. Back then, you could go north along Deansgate, with a right turn into Market Street. No chance today. Market Street is pedestrianised, but in 1923, you could drive along it, into Piccadilly, on to the A6 London Road, passing London Road Station, which would not become Manchester Piccadilly until 1960. Downing Street next, which is where today’s A57 and A6 join. A bit further along the A6 was a left turn Hyde road, (now a roundabout) and you were leaving Manchester along the A57.

    Aproximate route of the A57 through Central Manchester, in 1923

    Today, after crossing the Irwell, you are taken onto the A57(M) Ring Road, for about a mile and a half, to a complicated junction to join the A6 at Downing Street. Half a mile further, is the roundabout which takes you onto the A57, Hyde Road, and so, out of Manchester.

    What happens then will be the subject of the next post. For now, we have looked at two pools, and seen a road between Liverpool and Manchester develop from the Middle Ages to today. Since the 1970s, the option has been to use the M62, and I’m sure many do. But the A57 Liverpool/Manchester road is still there, stamped with its complicated print of history.

    1. Jones, Michael, J., Stocker, David, and Vince, Alan, 2003, The City by the Pool: Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln, Oxbow Books ↩︎
    2. Hearne, Thomas, (ed,), 1744–45. The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary (2nd ed.) ↩︎
    3. Ogilby, John, 1939, Britannia, Alexander Duckhams & Co. Ltd ↩︎
    4. Fiennes, Celia, 1888, Through England on a Side Saddle, Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, E.C ↩︎
    5. Defoe, Daniel, 1927, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Divided into Circuits or Journies, JM Dent and Co ↩︎
    6. Baily, F., A., 1936, The Minutes of the Trustees of the Turnpike Roads from Liverpool, Prescot, St Helens, Warrington, and Ashton in Makerfield, 1726 – 89, The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Website ↩︎
    7. Smiles, Samuel, 1864, James Brindley and the Early Engineers, John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, https://minorvictorianwriters.org.uk/smiles/c_brindley_3.htm ↩︎
    8. Cary, John, 1828, Cary’s New Itinerary, G & J Cary, 86, St James Street, London ↩︎
    9. Young, Henry, S., and Young Harold, E., 1913, Bygone Liverpool, Henry Young and Sons, Liverpool ↩︎