A1199 (Canonbury)

This article is about the A1199 in Canonbury.
For the other A1199 near Woodford that used to be part of the A11, see A1199 (Woodford).

St Paul's Road

This is the original A1199 – formerly the B103 – and is a short link road in north London.

Strangely, at both ends there is a junction with four exits, all of them A-classified roads, yet one of them takes a bend. At the Highbury Corner roundabout itself, the A1 takes a left turn (if you are heading north) from Upper Street into Holloway Road (although actually Holloway Road is like the fork handle here) heading to the north-west, while the other three roads go east, south-east, and south respectively. St Paul's Road is the road that heads east and is the A1199, while the road that heads south-east is the A1200 Canonbury Road.

After a short distance the A1201 branches off to the left. Some maps have labelled the western section of St Paul's Road as the A1201 – and indeed that was its original number – but the signposts clearly label it as the A1199. On continuing ahead through the heart of Canonbury, we eventually reach a traffic-light-controlled junction with Essex Road to the right, Newington Green Road to the left and Balls Pond Road ahead. This is where the A104 takes a bend, taking both Essex Road and Balls Pond Road. Newington Green Road is the start of the A105, heading eventually to Enfield via Manor House, Wood Green, and Palmers Green. If that is where you want to go, you would do better though to turn off a bit earlier into the unclassified Wallace Road.

From the prospective of road numbering, this last one is strange to work out: i.e., why they didn't make St Paul's Road the A104 and Essex Road the start of the A105 (although then it wouldn't reach Essex so they might have to rename it Enfield Road instead). That would leave us all with only one A1199, the other of which strangely enough also has one of its ends on the A104 (although a lot further north).