A36

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A36

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From:

Bath

To:

Southampton

Meets:

M27, A4, A27, A35, A303

Now part of:

A4

Grid References

Start ST714655
End SU336135

Route outline (key)

A36	Avonmouth - Bath
A36	Bath - Ower
A36	Ower - Totton

Related Pages

West Wellow services

On this 1927 map, the A36 starts in Avonmouth

The A36 starts at a TOTSO junction on the western outskirts of Bath. A dual-carriageway section of the A4 trunk road from Bristol ends at traffic lights, where the A4 bears off as non-primary to the left, and the A36 continues as trunk straight ahead. (Having recently learned from the 1922 list that the Bristol-Bath road used to be part of the A36, I can now see why this is!) The first section of the road skirts the centre of Bath to the south, and is effectively an A4 relief road. It runs through Twerton and Oldfield Park up to a strange elongated roundabout near Churchill Bridge, which lies directly beneath the main Bristol to London railway line. (This is the junction with the A367.) Then there's a very short section of dual carriageway at Widcombe, which crosses the Kennet and Avon canal.

The road turns north to follow the River Avon as far as Sydney Gardens, where it splits in two. The left-hand road is a spur over Cleveland Bridge which rejoins the A4, and the right-hand one is the A36 proper towards Warminster. This runs past some Ministry of Defence offices to a section where four transport routes run in parallel: road, canal, railway and river. It continues to Bathampton, where there's access to a private toll bridge over the Avon, and then closely follows the course of the river down the Limpley Stoke valley. (This section of the road is a little notorious, since it winds a lot and carries some rather heavy lorries on their way between Southampton Docks and the West of England. Plans for a parallel relief road have been mooted, but seem to be on hold at the moment.)

The road crosses into Wiltshire, and intersects the A366, after which the quality improves somewhat. The Beckington bypass is a fairly new section of road, which meets the A361 and has a short dual-carriageway stretch. The next section is straight, and (unusually for a single carriageway) has a multi-grade junction with the A3098. Then there's a single-carriageway bypass round Warminster, which meets the A362 and A350.

After that I'm afraid it's back to winding along a valley, this time the River Wylye. At Deptford there's a short section of dual carriageway with an odd hybrid multi-grade junction with the A303 (one part of this involves turning right through a gap in the central reservation!), but the rest is fairly slow and painful. The A30 joins at Wilton, and then it's probably the worst crawl of all, through the outskirts of Salisbury. (Once again, plans for a Salisbury bypass appear to have been put on ice.) Once you get there, though, the dual-carriageway relief road round the centre of Salisbury is actually quite good! It meets the A360, A345, eastbound A30 and A354 at roundabouts; then you leave Salisbury on the original single-carriageway road.

After this the quality of the road improves greatly. There's a dual-carriageway bypass round Alderbury, then a long, wide and fairly straight single-carriageway section, on which starts the A27 (yes, the A27 comes this far west!). You don't hit a village until Plaitford, just inside Hampshire.

Colin Bell writes:

Just before the Shoe Inn at Plaitford, a small stream runs under the road which is the border between the two counties. In fact there used to be a small bump in the road where the different authorities' roads began and ended. I've not noticed it recently, but perhaps that is because I now have a better car!

Then there's a roundabout junction with the A3090 (former A31) near Ower, and a short section of single carriageway leading to junction 2 of the M27 - which was formerly a section of motorway and supposedly once held the number A36(M), though this claim is dubious and no supporting evidence has yet been found.

The last section is now non-primary, to encourage use of the M27 and M271. There's a multi-grade totso junction with the A326, where the A36 heads off through Totton, finally joining the A35 just before Redbridge Causeway, which leads into Southampton.

Original Author(s): Guy