A11
From Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
| A11 | ||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| From: | London (TQ330811) | |||||||||||||||
| To: | Norwich (TG27080) | |||||||||||||||
| Length: | 110 miles (177 km) | |||||||||||||||
| Meets: | M11, A14, A47 | |||||||||||||||
| Primary Destinations | ||||||||||||||||
| Central London • Newmarket • Norwich • The City • Thetford • | ||||||||||||||||
| Highways Authorities | ||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Counties | ||||||||||||||||
|
Cambridgeshire • Essex • Middlesex • Norfolk • Suffolk | ||||||||||||||||
| Route outline (key) | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Contents |
Route
London
The A11, like the A5, was truncated at the London end by motorway building (in this case the M11). It still begins on the fringes of the City at Aldgate, then heads along Whitechapel Road to the Bow Flyover. At this point it used to continue over the flyover and thence to Stratford and Leyton, but since the 'new' A12 opened, M11 traffic is directed that way, so the A11 has been renumbered to A118 into Stratford. The route then through Leytonstone has been declassified, and has been substantially calmed and downgraded to resemble little more than an unimportant local road.
Old A11 from Woodford-Stump Cross
Whilst the pedants amongst us would claim that this next section is no longer part of the A11, and therefore has no place here, to local people the route described will always be known as the old A11. Road names such as London Road, Harlow Road, Stortford Road, Stansted Road and Cambridge Road abound through this section.
After meandering through east London along a route that has now been usurped by the A12, the old A11 crosses the A406 North Circular Road between the Waterworks Roundabout and the start of the M11, bearing the number A1199. If you want to join either of those two roads, you need to take the A104 south from Woodford. At the point where the A1199 and A104 meet, the former road gives way to the A104 and heads north above the North Circular Road through Buckhurst Hill, fighting its way through the suburban sprawl towards Epping Forest. This is the last we’ll see of the A11 number until we reach the Cambridgeshire countryside some 35 miles away. In Woodford, the road forks – the eastern leg is the A121, a road we will meet again before saying goodbye to London.
Epping Forest is a large swathe of greenery, owned by the Corporation of London. It is a magnet for people in north London - it is the first decent sized area of open space that you pass on your way out of town.
At five-ways roundabout, we meet the A121 again - this time heading from the east towards the M25 at junction 26. From Fiveways, the old A11 continues northwards, now downgraded to the B1393, though it is still a very busy road.
On the outskirts of the village of Epping, we pass Bell Common. On your right, when heading north, there is a cricket ground. You could believe that the cricket ground had been there for many years, but you’d be mistaken. In the mid 1980s the cricket ground was dug up to enable the M25 motorway to be built in a tunnel through this area. Once the tunnel was completed, the cricket ground was reinstated on top.
Epping itself is a small market town, once the haunt of highwaymen, preying on the travellers using the road that became the A11. These days, the road is much safer – the last highway robbery taking place in 1837, a hundred years after Dick Turpin is said to have operated in the area. The town was home to some 16 coaching inns – a sign of the town’s importance on the main road towards London from East Anglia. A few of these coaching inns survive to the present day. Epping is also known as one of the outposts of the London Underground – it is the terminus of the Central Line.
To the south of Harlow, we meet the M11 motorway and the A414, both of which are now roads of greater importance than the once dominant A11. To stay on the route of the A11, we must continue north along the A414 towards Harlow, before turning right onto an unclassified road into Potter Street and on to Old Harlow. Now dominated by the 1960s New Town, Old Harlow is the only part of Harlow to have any character, the remainder of the town is a soul-less concrete jungle.
On the northern outskirts of Harlow, at Harlow Mill, the A11 baton is taken by the A1184. Crossing the County boundary into Hertfordshire and the small town of Sawbridgeworth, our route is tree-lined, but with large houses set back from the road on either side. On the right hand side we pass the gatehouse for Beckingham Palace – the home (one of the homes….) of David and Victoria Beckham.
Sawbridgeworth is a small town. Its centre is focussed on Bell Street, a narrow one-way road turning right off the A1184 at the White Lion pub. This junction, together with one or two others, is responsible for the congestion that chokes Sawbridgeworth during the weekday rush hours.
The A11 was downgraded to the A1184 when the M11 motorway was built over 20 years ago to relieve a heavily congested A11. Once again, the A1184 is carrying the same volume of traffic as it did before the motorway was built, but rather than it being long distance traffic as it was in the 1970s, the traffic is largely that running from Bishops Stortford to Harlow, and vice versa.
From Sawbridgeworth, we head north through Spelbrook to Bishop’s Stortford. At the southern boundary of the town, we say goodbye to the A1184 which follows the western bypass, and continue into the town centre on the B1383. Stortford is another market town, but the historic A11 avoids the town centre and passes through Hockerill traffic lights to the east. The narrow approach from the south means that this junction is also frequently congested.
Leaving Stortford behind us, we cross the A120 bypass and into rural Essex. The village of Stansted Mountfichet is next – a pretty village not under direct threat from the expansion of Stansted Airport as the M11 motorway runs between the two.
We continue north, passing through Ugley. The village is named after a person called Ucga, who had a clearing or ‘Ley’ in the area – hence Ugley. After Quendon we cross the M11 motorway and arrive in one of the many Newports in Britain. In this case, the name means New Market rather than anything to do with boats. Given that the last recorded market in Newport was held in the 12th Century, the old market must have been very old indeed! The Newport market transferred to the nearby town of Saffron Walden.
To the north of Newport, between the old A11 and Saffron Walden, lies Audley End house, a 17th Century house with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. For a while, the house acted as one of Charles II’s royal palaces. Samuel Pepys was a visitor there. These days, the house is open to the public. The grounds feature a miniature railway.
It’s a short haul now along the west bank of the River Cam, through the large village of Great Chesterford and on to Stump Cross, where we meet the M11 spur road at a dumbbell roundabout junction. A left turn will take you back down the M11 to London, a right turn takes you onto the dual carriageway towards Newmarket and on towards Norwich. For the first time since the heart of London, the road is called by its historic number, the A11.
Stump Cross - Norwich
We leave the M11 at a free-flowing junction with a mile-long motorway spur. It then becomes a high-quality dual carriageway (and a reasonably new one - it's not shown in my 1991 Readers Digest atlas) with a couple of junctions (A505 and A1307) before Newmarket. The old A11 (the Roman route) goes straight on through Newmarket, now A1304, but we veer to the north and multiplex with the A14. North of Newmarket, at what looks like quite a complex junction from the road but isn't really on a map, we rejoin the route of the old A11. A few miles of dual carriageway soon ends at a Fiveways Roundabout (Mildenhall) where 6 roads of varying importance meet in chaotic fashion, and then the fun really starts: it's narrow single carriageway from there to Thetford, although there are plans to dual it before too long. Thetford was bypassed quite early on (diverging dramatically from the Roman route) - the bypass is dual, but with oddly infuriating roundabouts.
The dualled stretch continues beyond Thetford and after Attleborough we join what looks like a very new section of high-quality dual carriageway which runs all the way to Norwich's new bypass (the A47). We get disappointingly sidelined onto a roundabout here as the A47 flies over, but the reason soon becomes clear: a few more minutes of dual carriageway very suddenly turns into an ordinary suburban street. We lose primary status at the outer ring road (old A47) then end inauspiciously on an unattractive roundabout on the inner ring road (although we presumably used to go all the way along St Stephen's St).
Template:Original authors:urpthebare
Paul adds:
They dualled the M11-Newmarket stretch about 5–6 years ago. I remember going down the roman road (big long track basically, parallel to old A604) about 10 years ago (not long after I'd moved to Cambridge) and you came to a gap in a hedge at Worsted Lodge, and crossed the A11 by foot. It was two-lane, fairly busy. There's now a ruddy great bridge over a 6-lane dual in that very spot. Such is progress. The bit between Newmarket and Barton Mills (the fiveways roundabout) was the most recent bit to be dualled IIRC. The road from there to Thetford isn't dualled (no need), but it is a fantastic dead straight road through the forest. I like it: racetrack.
The road through Great Chesterford does a majestic, banked, 90-degree turn, engineered to be taken at a fair speed: far too grand for a B-road, but fitting for the former A11!
nightdriver adds:
From the end of the Newmarket bypass, the next section of dual carriageway was constructed in the mid-90's bypassing Red Lodge (which used to be a strip of truck stops) and joining the Barton Mills bypass (constructed early 80's I think). The roads that meet the A11 here are A1065 and A1101; it's called Fiveways Roundabout.
On the single carriageway section at Elveden, a set of traffic lights has been installed to cut down accidents at this notorious black spot (cheapskates!). It's the only set between London and Norwich if you take the M11/A11.
The Thetford bypass was built round about (no pun intended!) 1990. It only had one section of dual carriageway originally but the contractors offered to build the whole thing as a dual carriageway as it would be cheaper in the long run. That's why we have those horrible roundabouts; it was done on the cheap and I suppose we should be grateful it's not mostly a single carriageway as was intended.
The Attleborough bypass was built in 1985 and is a nightmare; part single carriageway, part dual with a nasty centre lane to turn right on top of the bridge over the B1077.
The next section is the Wymondham bypass, built 1996 and I believe it was the first road built in the UK using a new type of concrete. Certainly very smooth. The old A11 through Wymondham is now the B1172. This section flows into the Hethersett bypass, built a few years earlier. The last section between the A47 and the ring road features the Cringleford bypass. I don't know when that was built but I would guess early '70's.
ace@a11 writes:
'Fiveways' roundabout is actually known as the Wake Arms roundabout and has been for many, many years. Until the early 1980s there was a rather run-down pub named the 'Wake Arms' on the site of the current pub/eatery. The new building appeared in the late 1980s and was known as 'City Limits'; its signs bore that name, plus 'Wake Arms' in very small type below. The owners obviously wished the roundabout to assume the new pub's name. I can't recall what the building is currently called, but the roundabout is still referred to by its historic Wake Arms name.
Links
| A11 | ||
| ||
| ||
|
