A3090
From Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
| A3090 | |||||||||||||
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| From: | Winchester (SU472264) | ||||||||||||
| To: | Ower (SU327172) | ||||||||||||
| Length: | 14.3 miles (23 km) | ||||||||||||
| Meets: | M3, A27, A36, A3057 | ||||||||||||
| Primary Destinations | |||||||||||||
| Winchester • | |||||||||||||
| Highways Authorities | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Counties | |||||||||||||
| Route outline (key) | |||||||||||||
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The A3090 is an important local road in Hampshire. It now runs on a completely different route to its original alignment, although the shift from the old to the new has been gradual. It's current route is largely the "missing bit" of the A31.
Route
Hockley Interchange - Ower
The A3090 now starts at the notorious Hockley Interchange with the M3 just south of Twyford Down. It runs on a new link road up to Oliver's Battery, where it joins the old route of the A31 west of Winchester. There's a rolling ride through countryside with nice views up to the picturesque town of Hursley, longtime home to one of IBM's offices.
Past Hursley, there's a turning for the B3043 to Chandler's Ford, while we head round to the right and enter more woodland than previously. There's a nice straight run of road (appropriately called "The Straight Mile") before arriving at the outskirts of Romsey. We pass under the railway bridge and turn left at a roundabout by the old cinema. At the next roundabout along, the A27 arrives, which shares a brief multiplex around the town, bypassing it to the south.
After crossing the River Test, the A27 splits off to the right, and our road suddenly turns into a full scale dual carriageway. There's a fast run along this down to the roundabout with the A36, with the M27 not too far away, where the road ends. The A31 reasserts itself a mile or so away, though it doesn't become a fully fledged trunk route until the next junction down.
History
The A3090 was provisionally allocated around 1934 when construction of the A33 Winchester Bypass started, and took over a section of the old road when the bypass opened in 1940. It started at King's Worthy where the bypass diverged, then ran on London Road, Worthy Road and Hythe Street, ending at a junction with North Walls, City Road and Jewry Street, which was the original endpoint of the A34 (which took over the old A33 route down Jewry Street and out to St Cross).
When the A34 King's Worthy Link road opened in 1969, the A3090 was extended along Jewry Street to meet the A31 at its junction with the High Street.
In 1976, following minor improvements to the Winchester Bypass, including grade separation at Bar End, the erstwhile B3057 suddenly became a fully fledged primary route with the A31 multiplexing round the bypass, and using a short section of the old A33 and Poles Lane. The A3090 was then extended again along the west part of the High Street and out of Winchester until it joined the new route just south of Hursley.
In 1994, when the M3 was finally completed by obliterating Twyford Down, the old A33 / A31 junction at the south end of the Winchester bypass was removed, immediately declassifying the A31 as far as Hursley. For a few years, maps appeared to show this anomaly with the A3090 suddenly turning into the A31 seemingly in the middle of nowhere, before the whole mess was tidied up and the rest of the A31 renumbered as the A3090 as far as the A36.
At around the same time as this, all A roads around Winchester were downgraded, resulting in the original course of the A3090 from King's Worthy to the city being downgraded as an extension of the B3047, while a new link road left the A3090 at Oliver's Battery with somewhere to go to meet the M3.
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