A3051

Route

The A3051 forms a short drive through a few small Hampshire villages, adding no real strategic importance but giving some status to a fairly busy road. It also has some tumbling speed limits.

Botley - Park Gate

Entering Burridge

Today the A3051 starts outside Botley station on the A334, where it begins to head south past Fairthorne Manor. It continues to head south through fields until it bends round to the right into woodland. Things then suddenly change, as it heads through Burridge and becomes very urban. Without changing much we enter Swanwick, where we cross the only roundabout on our route (not including the terminal one).

We lose some of the urbanness as we fly over the M27 to pass Swanwick station and a few shops. We continue until we reach the A27 with a small roundabout at the end. That's not quite the end, however, as the Futures section explains.

History

The full length of the A3051 in 1956

When the roads were first numbered this, along with the A334 west of here, was part of the A27, as this was the traditional route (a lot of the A27 in this area is named 'Botley Road') and what is now the A27 struggled to cross the River Hamble at Bursledon, as the current bridge was not then built.

Heading north from Botley as far as the then-A333 at Fisher's Pond was the B3036. This road was upgraded to Class I status in the mid-1920s becoming the first time the A3051 number appeared on the ground. In 1935 the A27 was rerouted via Bursledon; the section to the west of Botley became an extension of the A334 whilst the section to the south became part of the A3051. There was a short multiplex through the village with the A334 number dominant.

Following the completion of the M27 in the 1970s the original section of the A3051 was downgraded to Class II status and is now the B3354, leaving the 1930s extension as the only part of the route.

Future

Whitely is an ever-expanding village with large residential and commercial areas; however for a long time the only exit was on to M27 J9, even though the A3051 skirts the western side of the village. (More recently an exit onto the A3051, formerly footpath only, was opened up). There have been talks for nearly 30 years about extending Whitely Way, the main road through Whiteley, to meet the A3051 somewhere near Curdridge and diverting the A3051 down it. If the proposed Northern expansion of Whiteley goes ahead, this A3051 diversion is likely to finally happen.

When the Segensworth Roundabout (the roundabout immediately south of M27 J9, with a link road between the two) was improved in 2000, signs were put up which labelled the road between the two as 'Botley A3051', which were sprayed out. The spray washed off however, leading drivers to erroneously believe that the link road is part of the A3051. This is not currently the case and the A3051 is still signposted via the A27 to Park Gate. The signs have since been patched and presumably the A3051 number is still there.