London Shooters Hill old "A2" alignment

[WHBM]

I am trying to trace the history of the two older routes across Blackheath and past Greenwich Park, the A2 in south-east London.

One goes slightly to the north, through an area called Vanbrugh Park, and as the eastern end of it is called Old Dover Road that looks like the original routing of the London to Dover road.

The other just shortcuts this through the park, slightly to the south, the present A2 (in part), and looks like a bypass built to give a bit of a shortcut. It now has the junction with the Blackwall Tunnel southern approach. However the oldest map I can find, 1850, shows both were present then. The adjacent houses are early/mid Victorian, and have been around since that map's times. It has the name Shooters Hill Road, which is that given to the continuation further east. This does of course all predate any A2 classification, or motor vehicles.

The Old Dover Road route looks a straight continuation of the road further out, which was Watling Street. But both these routes through Blackheath look pretty straight. Which was the original ?

[RichardA35]

Some earlier maps are available here after a bit of a search.
The Hasted 1778 and the 1832 map give more precedence to the southerly route.

[WHBM]

Thank you, those are useful. It looks like both roads have been around in current form for a very long time.

We are trying to identify the exact route of the Dover Stagecoach in the opening pages of Charles Dickens' novel "Tale of Two Cities", where lawyer Jarvis Lorry fears kidnap from a highwayman, but it turns out to be a messenger looking for him. The novel says it is approaching Shooters Hill. It is set in 1775, but Dickens was writing in 1860 and doubtless thought of the roads as at that time.

The cartographer of the 1695 map in the link is excused, somewhat, for having drawn it with North at the bottom. Did he anticipate that 330 years later someone was going to have to turn a laptop upside-down to make full sense of it .

[Ross Spur]

The Roman roads in the area were discussed at an Antiquarian Society meeting which was reported in the Lewisham Borough News of 21 February 1913. Old Dover Road was part of Watling Street which continued through Greenwich Park to the current Nevada Street and then to the City. The highway across the Park was closed on the condition that another road was made for the public (Charlton Way maybe). It also stated that Shooters Hill Road was a second Roman Road.

As for the stagecoach route maybe a strip map around the time may help. Here's one from 1675 https://www.historytoday.com/archive/ca ... dover-1675