Of Turnpikes and April Fools

To understand the present day A303 trunk road, you have to understand a little bit more about the recent history of routes around Stonehenge and the road west from London to Penzance.

The bigger road near Stonehenge didn’t initially run along the route of what became the A344.  Instead, it led from Amesbury to Seven Barrows (Now known as the New King’s Barrows) to Maddington, north of Shrewton, and then on to Warminster and eventually the important trading port of Barnstaple in north Devon, via Bridgewater.

Traffic on the minor route between Amesbury and Mere, past Stonehenge and on through Winterbourne Stoke, really picked up in the 1700s and around 250 years ago, the powers that be organised themselves into the Amesbury Turnpike Trust, opening up the route from Mere to Thruxton and on to London. Money raised through tolls was used to maintain these roads and provide a profit for the turnpike trust.  It was probably around this time that the direct link to Bridgewater and Barnstaple was broken when a section of the route was converted to parkland by an affluent landowner – no doubt trying to recreate his idealistic view of what the “natural” landscape should look like. Sound familiar?

Attempts were made to improve the road to Shrewton after 1761, but these were abandoned.  In 1773, a brand new turnpike road was built, leading away from the Amesbury to Mere turnpike at Stonehenge Bottom, directly to Shrewton; the route of the recently closed A344.  

In 1871, both these roads and several others in the locality were dis-turnpiked.  The reasons for this are unclear, but by the early part of the 20^th century, the main route west from London had changed radically west of Basingstoke and looked as follows.   It began by following the route of what was then the A30:

London

Hounslow Heath

Staines

Egham

Bagshot

Hartley Row

Basingstoke

Dummer Down

Stockbridge 

Lopcombe Corner

Salisbury

Wilton

Shaftesbury

Sherborne

Yeovil

Crewkerne

Chard

Yarcombe

Honiton

Exeter.

Then along a bit of the then A38

Exeter

Kennford

Chudleigh

Ashburton

Ivybridge

Plymouth

Torpoint

Liskeard—

Bodmin

And finally back on the route of the A30

Bodmin

Fraddon

Zelah

Redruth

Hayle

Penzance

In 1936, the Trunk Roads Act came into force, intended to develop a network of 30 fast, important and ‘modern’ routes across the UK.  A bit ironic when you consider the traffic jams of today.  The route of the current A303 through Wiltshire wasn’t even considered as part of this review – the London to Penzance route via Salisbury was going to become the new T3 trunk road.  As it happens, the new nomenclature, based on the French Route Nationale, was never adopted, even though all the new signs had been prepared and so the A30 kept its status as the main trunk route through the West Country.

In 1939, the bridge over the River Till in Winterbourne Stoke , which now carries the A303, was built.  No doubt it was designed to carry the traffic of the 1930s on what remained a minor route to the West Country. (The Till road bridge became a listed Grade II building on 10 October 1988).  Aside from a few repairs and modifications to the roadway over the years, the bridge remains largely unchanged form its pre trunk road days.  This is a really important factor when considering the A303 today and it is a point I will return to in future posts.

Nothing changed after WWII either.  In 1946, a second Trunk Roads Act was passed, but again, the London to Penzance route in Wiltshire remained unchanged.

It was only in 1958 that the A303 was born and the role of the A30 downgraded.  On April the 1^st to be exact. 

Finally, in this roundup of the last 250 years of recent history, the Amesbury bypass was opened in 1970 – ending a few hundred yards east of Stonehenge bottom and providing us with the legacy from which we now suffer.

There is an encouraging message here, for all of us. Paths have become tracks and tracks have reverted to downland.  Downland has become road. Roads have become turnpikes and in turn, these have been de-turnpiked.  Trunk roads have been created and then detrunked. 

Nothing that has been done to the roads around Winterbourne Stoke and Stonehenge in the past can’t be undone in the future – it has happened time and time again before.  When it comes to the A303, there is no such word as can’t.