kilmarnock bypass

[Gav]

Saw this - an alternative kilmarnock - bartholomew map from years ago had a kilmarnock bypass on the wrong side of Kilmarock.

Actually some of it was built and was called the Western Road. its dual carriageway most of the way.

However this stub exists just south of the Irvine Road where the road finishes.

[Truvelo]

Looking at the age of the houses along Western Road it appears to have been built up as soon as it was built. Perhaps it was another victim prior to the introduction of the restriction of ribbon development act. Had it been completed it would have been more of a throughpass than a bypass. The northern end of it looks decent as the houses are set well back but it would never have been a substitute for the eastern bypass.

[fras]

If you look at the 1:25000 level on Bing Maps OS pages, there seems to have been a path left for it to continue south until it gets to the Troon railway line, then it peters out. One has to wonder why Bartholomews put it in as built rather than putting a dashed red line.

[Chris Bertram]

If you look at the 1:25000 level on Bing Maps OS pages, there seems to have been a path left for it to continue south until it gets to the Troon railway line, then it peters out. One has to wonder why Bartholomews put it in as built rather than putting a dashed red line.

Bart's maps are beautiful things to look at, but are often slightly at variance with the actualité. Very high production values - printed on heavy stock and board-bound - but not aligned with the facts on the ground. I wonder how many people came a cropper as a result?

[Truvelo]

I wonder if it's an attempt to get ahead of the competition by showing planned roads as completed so they can say their maps are more up to date then anyone elses?

[fras]

My late father's road atlas of 1938 shows a by-pass around Lyndhurst as a dashed red line. Just as well, as it has never been built !

[Steven]

I wonder if it's an attempt to get ahead of the competition by showing planned roads as completed so they can say their maps are more up to date then anyone elses?

Well, remember that Bart's produced a bunch of maps in 1922 containing the draft road list, including the A7 going to Berwick and the A2 going via Gravesend in a desperate bid to be ahead of the competition.

[Euan]

As I understand it this project dates back to the 1930s and was dropped before the southern half of the road was built. The B7064 designation for the northern half of the road however seems to be a couple of decades younger than the road itself.

[Steven]

As I understand it this project dates back to the 1930s and was dropped before the southern half of the road was built. The B7064 designation for the northern half of the road however seems to be a couple of decades younger than the road itself.

It looks to be a bit younger than that - the road doesn't appear on the OS One Inch sheet from 1945, but does appear on the 1958 edition.

[Gav]

the above you can see the junction with the A71 and then the stub extending south that never came to much.

this is a little more interesting - it looks like a right of way between the golf course and the residential street as far as the railway.

Even over the railway and through the scool that wasnt there you can see the demarkation of the old houses with the new. so that road line would have carried on. and then through a few curves to meet with the old A77 route.

[Truvelo]

It appears on large scale 1930s OS mapping including the bridge over the railway which has no road yet connecting to it.

[Ross Spur]

Some gleanings from Kilmarnock Herald and The Scotsman. Plenty of reports of council meetings for the planning and then they fizzle out.

Proposals for a bypass of Kilmarnock first came in 1918 and again in 1935, the latter in response to the Minister of Transport's request to local authorities for a five year road plan. The bypass scheme put forward was to speed up traffic from Glasgow to the Ayrshire Coast and relieve traffic congestion in the town which existed in the summer months. The Ministry credited Kilmarnock with having the second largest amount of through traffic in Scotland. 12,000 vehicles passed the Cross in one day in August 1935 and 1,200 passed in one hour on 18th August.

The new road was to branch off from the main road at the Burgh boundary in the north, cross Kilmaurs Road, Irvine Road and Dundonald Road and join the main Ayr road at the Caprington Policies. Thus, a full north-south bypass. New housing schemes were being built at the time but were being laid out so that they would form part of the new road.

After surveying was completed the scheme was agreed by the Town Council in February 1936. Expenditure was to be £135,000 with 66.6% recoverable as a grant from Ministry of Transport. It was to be a 20 foot single carriageway road with a second carriageway to be added later. Total length was 3.5 miles with a timescale of 5 years to completion. By March 1936 the Council had agreed to proceed with the full scheme: dual carriageways within a 100 foot road width, at a cost of £180,000.

Reports on progress are patchy. There are references to house addresses on Western Road in March 1938. This would tie in with the short section from Knockinlaw to Kilmaurs Road shown on the OS 6 inch map surveyed in 1938 (published 1948), see NLS at https://maps.nls.uk/view/75494414 and is probably the part within the new housing schemes mentioned previously. The Scotsman, in an article on the advantages of dual carriageways, stated that work on the bypass commenced in October 1938. There is some further Council borrowing in 1939 for the bypass. It was said in a Council meeting in July 1941 that expenditure of the Roads and Bridges Department had been heavy over the years and that the bypass was partially completed.

Nothing then comes up in the Kilmarnock Herald so perhaps Western Road was completed just before or early into the war. There is a brief mention of it at http://www.oldroadsofscotland.com/ayr%2 ... k_District

[wrinkly]

Have your investigations in the local press found any reference to the pre-war A77/B778 bridge (since widened to carry the M77) at Fenwick?

[Ross Spur]

Have your investigations in the local press found any reference to the pre-war A77/B778 bridge (since widened to carry the M77) at Fenwick?

Yes, Fenwick cropped up. The bypass was an unemployment relief scheme, along with widening the Glasgow to Kilmarnock road, and was agreed in October 1930 to be put to the Ministry for grant approval.

It mentioned that if the roads were to be on the same level, traffic from Stewarton would debouch onto the new road from a deep cutting making the crossing dangerous. To obviate this danger it would be necessary to carry the proposed new road over the Stewarton road by a new bridge. This would mean lowering the level of this road (the Stewarton road I assume) for a short distance, but the new gradient would be less than it was before. So, an early flyover.

A report on 9 June 1932 described the Town Councillors' day out to inspect the local reservoirs during which they went via the new bridge on the Fenwick bye pass road.

I'll be careful when I am debouching in future.