The first bypass?

[Dadge]

What was Britain's first bypass? ie. a road built to take through traffic away from an older section of highway. Looking at old (Victorian) maps you can see quite a lot of examples. I'm not sure if I'd count Roman roads in the category of "bypass" but I'll exclude them from this enquiry.

(If this question has been dealt with before please point me in the direction of the info. Thanks.)

[bothar]

What was Britain's first bypass? ie. a road built to take through traffic away from an older section of highway. Looking at old (Victorian) maps you can see quite a lot of examples. I'm not sure if I'd count Roman roads in the category of "bypass" but I'll exclude them from this enquiry.

(If this question has been dealt with before please point me in the direction of the info. Thanks.)

This is a "how long is a piece of string" question. Roads (of some sort) existed for thousands of years and anytime someone changed the route then it was a "bypass". For instance, a lot of 19th century roads were rerouted to avoid hills.

[JohnnyMo]

I expect the answer would be one of the turnpikes however you may want to look at this thread

[Johnathan404]

Are we looking for a road which has bypassed a settlement and/or a bottleneck, rather than any time a corner has been cut?

What could also be interesting, if not more suited to another thread, is finding the oldest route to have had "Bypass" and similar phrases in its name.

[Piatkow]

One that I couldn't find on the other thread is Euston Road in London which was built to keep livestock being driven to Smithfield out of the fashionable parts of the West End. It was on the edge of open country when it was built.

[RichardA626]

Wellington Road in Stockport bypassed the traditional London - Carlisle route through the town centre, especially the section along Hillgate & Underbank to the south, and Lancashire Hill to the North.

[Dadge]

I expect the answer would be one of the turnpikes however you may want to look at this thread

Thanks. There are two 19th century bypasses mentioned in that thread: Corfe Mullen and Thurstaston. I know that Sabristi are mainly interested in the motor-car era but I wonder if some of you are bored enough in lockdown to want to investigate turnpikes...

My interest was piqued when I was looking at the 1854 map of Marsden, Yorkshire, and saw it already had two bypasses. These we built during the development of the Wakefield & Austerlands Trust turnpike, a road that must have been as impressive in its day as the M6 is in ours.

https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345088
https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Wakef ... npike_Road

[Steven]

New Road, Willenhall, Staffordshire. The first bypass of the town centre (of three), circa 1820.

The original route through the town centre was via Wolverhampton Street and Doctor's Piece (yes, really), but it was apparently considered to be "too narrow".

[KeithW]

For anyone interested in Turnpike Roads you can do far worse than start with this site
http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/?LMCL=vtl4Sg

As well as maps it has a spreadsheet which lists all the Turnpikes, toll bars and the modern road numbers as well as a list for each county.

One very interesting page deals with the building of Medieval and later roads around Oxford starting in the Plantagenet era some of which could be considered as a bypass.
http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/rutv8%20Oxf ... 0Roads.htm

Personally I think the first bypasses in the UK were probably on Roman military roads such as Ermine Street and Dere Street which were intended to allow Roman military forces based in places such as Cataractonium (Catterick) , York and Chester to move quickly to points on the frontier such as Corbridge for Hadrians wall or over what is now the A66 from Scotch Corner to reinforce the western end of Hadrians Wall at Luguvalium (Carlisle). Ermine street for example ran west of the Roman settlements of Cambridge and Durobrivae (Peterborough) via Godmanchester, Stilton and Water Newton.

This was not of course to avoid traffic congestion so much as to ensure they had a route that was usable in winter when floods were common.

[Peter350]

I expect the answer would be one of the turnpikes however you may want to look at this thread

Thanks. There are two 19th century bypasses mentioned in that thread: Corfe Mullen and Thurstaston. I know that Sabristi are mainly interested in the motor-car era but I wonder if some of you are bored enough in lockdown to want to investigate turnpikes...

My interest was piqued when I was looking at the 1854 map of Marsden, Yorkshire, and saw it already had two bypasses. These we built during the development of the Wakefield & Austerlands Trust turnpike, a road that must have been as impressive in its day as the M6 is in ours.

https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345088
https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Wakef ... npike_Road

Corfe Mullen is a funny one. It is clearly shown to exist on maps well back into the 19th century, but this was before the motor car era and travel habits would have been completely different then. I’d imagine when it was built, its purpose was more to divert traffic away from the narrow bridge at White Mill near Sturminster Marshall, rather than bypass Corfe Mullen. Nowadays though, it seems indistinguishable from the 1981 Wimborne Bypass.

On another note, I once overheard someone saying that the A31 used to go through Corfe Mullen village before the “bypass” was built. That was never the case though as the bypass in question existed before road numbering was introduced in 1921.

[millionmiledriver]

The Epping New Road from Woodford to the old Wake Arms near Epping was built in the 1830s to avoid 2 hills in Loughton Church Hill and Goldings Hill

[M4 Cardiff]

Archway Road, dating from 1813, serves as Highgate Bypass

[Owain]

Ever since I was a child I've wondered whether the route of the A4136 to the north of Coleford in the Forest of Dean was built as a bypass. It looks that way on a map, but the Wiki suggests that the Huntley-Monmouth road has followed that route since classification - originally as the B4223 - in 1922.

I guess it's possible that it could have been built before classification as a way for horse-drawn traffic to avoid the town centre and the climb on either side of it, by following the much flatter route from Five Acres to Berry Hill.

[rhyds]

An interesting fact that always seemed to jump out to me when I was a kid perusing old AA Road Atlases was the fact that the route of the A5 is obviously numbered/routed as a bypass of the densely trafficed West Midlands conurbations. Was this a 1922 attempt at keeping as much long distance traffic out of Coventry etc perhaps?

[KeithW]

An interesting fact that always seemed to jump out to me when I was a kid perusing old AA Road Atlases was the fact that the route of the A5 is obviously numbered/routed as a bypass of the densely trafficed West Midlands conurbations. Was this a 1922 attempt at keeping as much long distance traffic out of Coventry etc perhaps?

Its all in the Wiki but the section from London to Wroxeter is a very much older road than 1922 as it basically follows the line of the Roman Watling Street. Bypasses were opened at various dates, this can be seen in Sabre Maps if you select the 1922 MOT Layer. The continuation into Holyhead was built by Thomas Telford in the early 19th century

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=A5
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... A5/history

[Steven]

An interesting fact that always seemed to jump out to me when I was a kid perusing old AA Road Atlases was the fact that the route of the A5 is obviously numbered/routed as a bypass of the densely trafficed West Midlands conurbations. Was this a 1922 attempt at keeping as much long distance traffic out of Coventry etc perhaps?

It's definitely attached to the Roman Watling Street, rather than Telford's Holyhead Road, which went through the three city centres. In many ways, that's a surprising decision given the relative importance of the two routes in 1922, so I suspect it was a deliberate choice to keep the whole area in the "4" zone rather than half in the "5" zone, which also has a large part of Manchester, the whole of Liverpool and the conurbations around them.

[Ruperts Trooper]

An interesting fact that always seemed to jump out to me when I was a kid perusing old AA Road Atlases was the fact that the route of the A5 is obviously numbered/routed as a bypass of the densely trafficed West Midlands conurbations. Was this a 1922 attempt at keeping as much long distance traffic out of Coventry etc perhaps?

Many of the towns/city along the A5 are a mile or two from it, eg Hinckley, Nuneaton, Tamworth, Lichfield, Cannock and conveniently avoided by Watling Street /A5 rather than deliberately bypassed.

[Dadge]

For anyone interested in Turnpike Roads you can do far worse than start with this site
http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/?LMCL=vtl4Sg

As well as maps it has a spreadsheet which lists all the Turnpikes, toll bars and the modern road numbers as well as a list for each county.

One very interesting page deals with the building of Medieval and later roads around Oxford starting in the Plantagenet era some of which could be considered as a bypass.
http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/rutv8%20Oxf ... 0Roads.htm

Personally I think the first bypasses in the UK were probably on Roman military roads such as Ermine Street and Dere Street which were intended to allow Roman military forces based in places such as Cataractonium (Catterick) , York and Chester to move quickly to points on the frontier such as Corbridge for Hadrians wall or over what is now the A66 from Scotch Corner to reinforce the western end of Hadrians Wall at Luguvalium (Carlisle). Ermine street for example ran west of the Roman settlements of Cambridge and Durobrivae (Peterborough) via Godmanchester, Stilton and Water Newton.

This was not of course to avoid traffic congestion so much as to ensure they had a route that was usable in winter when floods were common.

Thanks for the links. As far as Roman roads are concerned, I specifically excluded them in the original post.

[the cheesecake man]

Wolfie's excellent The Great North Road Then and Now notes many early bypasses on just the one route including

Archway 1813
Hatfield House 1784 and again in 1854
Lemsford 1833
Welwyn, Wansford, Colsterworth, Foston all 1920s
Balderton 1767

Plus a debypass of Retford in 1766!

[SteveA30]

One wonders what these early re-routings were for. Were they so many horse and carriages/carts that the town was knee deep in s***?

The horses had to be changed at regular intervals at the various coaching inns and the passengers needed refreshment as well. But, most Inns seem to be in the towns.