A413

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A413

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From:

Tatling End

To:

Silverstone

Length:

50.4 miles (81.1 km)

Meets:

A40, A404, A355, A4128, A4010, A41, A418, A4157, A421, A422, A43

Primary Destinations

Amersham • Aylesbury • London • Uxbridge •

Highways Authorities

Buckinghamshire • Milton Keynes • Northamptonshire

Traditional Counties

Buckinghamshire • Northamptonshire

Route outline (key)

A413	Tatling End - Aylesbury
A413	Aylesbury - Silverstone

Route

The Misbourne Valley

The A413 passing under a railway viaduct in the Misbourne Valley

The A413 starts at Tatling End, near Denham on the A40. it steals the primary status from the A40, something it's had since the Westway in Central London. The junction doesn't allow anyone heading south on the A413 to go west on the A40 (access via local road through Tatling End) and traffic wanting to head north gets stopped by traffic lights. the road continues as dual carriageway, up the Misbourne Valley, to Chalfont St Peter. This bit is wide, fast and has only got a couple of side turns (like the aforementioned road through Tatling End). it also would be fairly easy to make it D3, but it doesn't require that. It passes under the M25 and then under a railway viaduct. This viaduct also goes over the M25, and once carried the main London to Oxford line-not bad for a hundred odd year old brick structure. We hit a roundabout for the B416 to Gerrards Cross, one of the wealthiest towns in Britain. We continue for a short distance before hitting another roundabout and the end of the dual carriageway, this time it's for Chalfont St Peter (another wealthy place). Many celebrities live in the CSP/GX, such as Ozzie Osbourne and Brian Cant to name but two. There are on average three cars per house here, but the A413 is freeflowing most of the time.

The road contines to Chalfont St Giles, home of Milton's Cottage and the road to Jordans where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania went to the Quaker Meeting House. The A413 skirts the Village, with a double mini roundabout on the edge, with the B4442 heading north past Noel Gallagher's house to Little Chalfont. The route continues following the Misbourne, in it's valley that looks too wide for it (it once carried glacial melt), up towards Amersham. Misbourne means literally 'missing river' as it is on Chalk and often disappears from the surface. Water is now pumped in to make up for the 90s where it was a rare occasion for it to be a trickle, partly due to the extraction of water further upstream and partly due to low rainfall. The fields next to it now flood in winter and it hasn't dried up for about 6 years. As we hit the town boundary of Amersham and a roundabout, we turn left onto the Amersham Bypass, with the old route (now A355) heading straight on and the A404 heading up the hill to the right. The Amersham bypass is wide, NSL, two lane single carriageway, though there is probably enough room to make it four lanes till the Gore Hill roundabout. The bypass has a roundabout near Amersham Hospital (and it's ugly tower block!) with the road to Wycombe (the A404) and meets the old route at Shardeloes.

The A413 Amersham bypass

The old route takes us through the 'Historic Market town of Amersham' it goes past many coaching inns here, as this is on the coach route from London to Birmingham. Other sights are: Tesco's - not really a sight but it means that the area around it is as busy as the pre-bypass days; St Mary's Church-a 13th century church clad in flints from the building of the Metropolitain Railway up the top of the valley in the late 1800s and buried in the cemetary is Ruth Ellis-the last woman to be hung in Britain (the grave is now umnmarked so people can't find it); the original site of Dr Challoners Grammar School, one of the first free Grammar schools (1624)-it is now a 'Science College' and the top school in England for GCSEs (though most boys come out wierd and very tall ); the second largest unsupported dome in Britain (after St Paul's) on the Baptist Church; The Market Hall, which sticks out into the wide road (S4 with car parking on one side just before it, between two mini roundabouts to narrow S2 round it and out to what could be S5, but is now car parking on two sides);the 'Four Weddings' Suite in the Crown Hotel, and Cromwell's Wife's local-the King's Arms (i'm guessing these had different names in the mid-1600s being a Roundhead area!). The old route heads out along High Street (dispite it being at the lowest altitude) with chicanes trying to stop people using it as a rat run from the west. it then ends at a roundabout with the modern route and the driveway for Shardeloes (large manor house). the road becomes Dual carriageway till the Little Missenden bypass. It then carries on as wide S2 past Little and Great Missenden (although when the railway crosses it it becomes narrow S2), stopping for a double roundabout outside the latter for the B485 to Chesham (from the north west) at the first and the A4128 to Great Missenden at the second. Roald Dahl's house is in Great Missenden, but unlike Milton's it's not open to the public (his wife is still alive and living there). The Misbourne ends in Great Missenden, so the A413 has to find it's own route across the Three Hundreds of Aylesbury, and the ridge of the Chiltern Hills.

Over the ridge

The A413 alongside Wendover Station

The gap the A413 finds is also followed by the railway, it is fairly straight and fast, cutting between Coombe Hill (near Chequers) and Wendover Woods-the two highest points in the Chilterns. The A413 used to go through the middle of Wendover, but now it follows a bypass (the last be built along this route) This bit of wide S2 starts on a new roundabout that goes over the railway, then drops down to run directly alongside it. it's easy to end up doing 100mph going northbound as it's downhill, into the Vale of Aylesbury. The Ridgeway crosses just before the station. The bridge is odd, one half old and the other half new. The B4009 meets the Wendover Bypass at a roundabout and heads north in a multiplex (dispite it facing south). It then heads south along the old A413 at the next roundabout, after recrossing the railway. The A413 gets urban and we enter Stoke Mandeville. The B4544 heads to Weston Turville, and the newly-bypassed Aston Clinton and the A4010 to Princes Risborough and High Wycombe meets us, though it's quicker to take the B4009 or the B4443, which meets us in bit. The road enter Aylesbury and meet the B4443, where the A413 becomes dual carriageway once more. It hits the Aylesbury ring road and multiplexes with the A41, and then the A418, whereupon it loses it's primary status and heads north.

Lez Watson writes:

The A413 approaches Aylesbury town centre along Walton Street meeting the A41 from London at the roundabout next to the County Hall building. This was the town’s first, and last, ‘skyscraper’ – an object of much derision over the past forty years. The A413 is then subsumed into the A41 along the dual carriageway as far as The Hen & Chickens pub where it turns right at the comic double roundabout and up Oxford Road (still the A41 but now non-primary along this short length) to the top of the hill. Here the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital (my birthplace) looks over another double roundabout where the A41 turns off west while the A413, non-primary for the rest of its length, heads along Buckingham Road to the edge of town. Two more roundabouts are negotiated before the road finally leaves the town, passing on the right the Holiday Inn and Watermead, a large thematic housing development from the 1980s.

Beyond Aylesbury

Having left the town the road reverts to its pre-motorway era condition to Winslow, via Hardwick and the attractive, if traffic laden, village of Whitchurch. The curious can turn right just before the village and drive through Cublington to Wing airfield, site of London’s proposed third airport in the 1960s. There’s only a hint now of the runways and buildings of the former wartime bomber base. Back on the route the A413 sweeps through Aylesbury Vale to the edge of Winslow where it is joined from the east by the B4032, the very bendy (but fun) road to Leighton Buzzard.

The A413 entering Buckingham

On through Winslow, over the railway closed to passengers in 1968, and forward to Buckingham past Addington manor on the left and then through Padbury village. The A413 now approaches the former county town, reaching a new ring road at a busy roundabout. Our road turns right and joins the A421 for half a mile before taking a left at the next roundabout to become the A413 again. Once over another roundabout and river bridge and to a roundabout on the A422, the A413 turns back into the town centre, before turning right to joining its old route and climbing up the hill out of the town. Those who know the town ignore the signs at the entry to Buckingham and simply go straight into the town from the ring road, past the University of Buckingham on the right, and down to the centre.

The road is now a fast-ish sweeping route to the A43 except for the parts through Maids Moreton, Akeley and Whittlebury. It joins the new, upgraded to dual carriageway, Oxford to Northampton road at a dumbbell junction about two miles north of Silverstone motor racing circuit (worth a detour, especially on a test or practice day), before doubling back south-south-westward along the old route of the A43 through Silverstone for around 4.5 km.

Ritchie Swann writes:

Don't forget, the B side to John Otway's "Bunsen Burner" a few years back was "A413 revisited". I have a copy somewhere, I should dig it out and find the lyrics.

Original Author(s): Simon Hollett & Lez Watson

A413

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