A325

Route

The A325 runs through the military towns on the Hampshire/Surrey border. The northern half is largely bypassed by the A331.

Section 1: Bagshot – Farnborough

A milestone beside the A325 at Farnborough

The A325 starts at the Jolly Farmer Roundabout, branching off the A30, a complex junction that isn't really a roundabout at all any more, but rather a difficult five-armed junction with lots of traffic signals that had a roundabout somewhere in its ancestry.

This junction has quite a lot of history behind it, as it used to be where the main postal routes from London to Land's End and Southampton diverged. The site of what is now the middle of the roundabout used to be a gallows where the "Jolly Farmer", a notorious highwayman, was hung here in the seventeenth century. The Jolly Farmer pub was then built on this site, but briefly turned into a Mongolian Barbecue in the mid nineties and is now a golf shop.

At any rate, the A325 heads south west in a fairly direct line to the Ravenswood Roundabout, passing through the leafy eastern suburbs of Camberley. This section of road is essentially a distributor for modern housing estates, though the residents of the large mansion-type houses found in this area might object to the word "estate". The Ravenswood Roundabout itself is suspended above the M3, looking for all the world like a grade separated roundabout interchange without the sliproads. There is, however, no connection to the motorway here, and no evidence that a junction was ever intended; this seems to simply be a product of the necessity for the junction to be provided at the point where the M3 passes underneath.

Past this, the A325 continues its slow-paced run through suburban surroundings, eventually reaching another roundabout that is the entrance to Frimley Park Hospital and which marks the entrance to Frimley, our second town, though the transition from one place to the next is virtually indistinguishable.

At the next roundabout the route crosses the B3411, and originally followed the road to the left through Frimley town centre. It now continues ahead onto a short dual carriageway bypass, curving gently around the town and crossing the Ascot-Ash Vale railway and the A331 Blackwater Valley Route. Crossing from Surrey into Hampshire, the A325 soon arrives at the Bradfords Roundabout, a busy junction with a bewilderingly complex arrangement of paintwork to control traffic flows. A short link road on the left runs to an interchange with the A331, which is a better route to Farnham than staying on the A325 itself, but the A325 still remains an important road as it carries all the traffic bound for the urban area lying ahead.

Continuing south, the road enters Farnborough, passing the railway station and St Michael's Abbey. A length of dual carriageway carries the A325 past the town centre, such as it is, interrupted by the Pinehurst Roundabout, a particularly large junction that has a multi-storey car park in the middle. This is not the last extra-large roundabout with unusual things in the middle that the A325 will encounter.

Section 2: Farnborough – Moor Park, Farnham

The A325 continues south, running in an almost straight line from here for the next couple of miles. It passes the main entrance to Farnborough Airfield before meeting the A3011 at the notorious Queens Roundabout. This junction was extensively reconstructed in the late 2010s and is now a large signalised junction with multiple circulating lanes, but continues to suffer regular congestion. From here, a length of fast and surprisingly open dual-carriageway begins, with a 60mph limit, flanked by playing fields and woods that are attached to the large military complexes in this area. A grade-separated junction connects to Alison's Road, the main distributor running through the middle of Aldershot Military Town.

The dual carriageway from Farnborough to Aldershot

The dual carriageway runs out shortly afterwards, and the A323 connects at a left-in-left-out junction on the west side of the road. The two routes then run concurrently for a short distance to the Wellington Roundabout, where the other half of the A323 continues eastwards to Aldershot town centre. The road now begins climbing and becomes a little more urban, meeting the B3008 at a mini-roundabout, after which it re-enters Surrey and its character changes: it's rather like Hampshire had a historic policy of turning the A325 into a major road while Surrey were content to have a meandering suburban backwater.

Narrower, twistier, and immediately far more built up, the road finds a path through Heath End and then Hale, stopping at the way for a couple of signalised junctions. The B3005 and then A3016 both travel away up the hill to the west, on their way towards Upper Hale and the A287.

After the church at Hale, the road suddenly widens out and opens up again, reaching the vast Six Bells Roundabout where the B3007 crosses on its way into Farnham. This is the start of the Farnham Bypass, and the B3007 to the west is the original course of the A325. A short length of dual carriageway runs south to the Water Lane roundabout, where the B3208 from Badshot Lea terminates, and then there's a short link - barely more than a space for queueing traffic to wait - before the A325 arrives at the Shepherd and Flock Roundabout, where it finds the A31.

The Shepherd and Flock Roundabout at Moor Park gets its name from the pub which sits in the middle, along with a cluster of houses, these having been corraled into isolation when the junction was built in the 1960s. The A325 once continued west from here to pass through Farnham town centre, but that route is now the B3228, and traffic wishing to continue on the next section of the road should instead join the A31 Farnham Bypass for a short distance.

Section 3: Cox Bridge, Farnham - Longmoor Camp

From the Coxbridge Roundabout, west of Farnham, the A325 departs the A31 and immediately enters the village of Wrecclesham. From here to the end of the route is the section that was originally A326. Since it is no longer connected to the rest of the A325 it may as well have a separate number today, but A326 has been reallocated elsewhere.

Residents in Wrecclesham are perennially unhappy about the level of traffic passing through, but a bypass for this Surrey village would have to be over the county boundary in Hampshire, and this administrative problem has never been solved. As a result, the road passes through the heart of the village, executing a turn at a mini-roundabout and meandering uphill to finally reach open countryside near the Ball and Wicket pub. The sign announcing the road's return to Hampshire is accompanied by another informing you that you're entering Jane Austen Country: she lived not far away in Alton.

From here the road becomes a series of long straights, passing the tourist attraction of Birdworld (signposted from the M3 and A3, no less) and the hamlet of Bucks Horn Oak before entering Alice Holt Forest. This is a pleasant and often fast drive through woodland and gentle countryside, but while the turns and gradients are not challenging, they conspire to restrict overtaking opportunities to just a handful of places.

The village of Frith End is followed by Sleaford, less a hamlet and more an address for a large car dealership and an overgrown farm shop. The traffic lights here connect to the B3004. Another straight run through the woods on Broxhead Common bring the A325 to a newer roundabout on the northern edge of Bordon, and the beginning of the Bordon and Whitehill Relief Road.

Entering Whitehill on the northbound A325

This bypass, opened in 2019, replaces the original route of the A325 through the town. The first length, Louisburg Avenue, is limited to 30mph and noticeably built up with brand new houses, but it quickly opens out to a decent road - though one still limited to 40 - that skirts the edge of the town, following the line of the long-dismantled Longmoor Military Railway. Bordon and Whitehill are military towns that the army has now vacated, and the relief road is part of the enormous reconstruction works, taking advantage of large swathes of brownfield land to provide scores of new houses along with shops and schools to support them.

The southern end of the relief road is marked by a strange dogbone-shaped roundabout at Whitehill, and the A325 resumes its original course, another ruler-straight line across heathland bordering the rifle ranges towards Greatham.

Originally, the A325 carried on into Greatham, then through Liss to meet the A3 at Sheet, just east of Petersfield. Today, however, another small roundabout marks a sudden change of direction to the east, where a short link road runs to Longmoor Camp, another large army barracks where the A325 terminates at a GSJ on the A3 Petersfield & Liphook bypass.

History

Route changes

The original route into Farnham was along the B3007 to terminate on the A31. The road south through Bordon was the A326. It was renumbered as an extension of the A325 in 1935; a draft consultation between the Ministry of Transport and Hampshire County Council in October 1934 suggested retaining the A326 number for the route, but it was changed to A325 in January 1935.

The old A325 through Greatham has been narrowed and traffic calmed so it doesn't like anything like an A road any more, before the B3006 enters and takes the priority line. There's then the infamous roundabout with the A3 before it runs through Liss. Here the B3006 TOTSOs off to the left and the old A325 heads back onto the A3, which now runs right on top of its old route. The final leg of the old A325 to Sheet has largely been declassified and removed, as there's a new link road from the new A3, which joins up with the old road at pretty much the same place as the A325 used to.

Bypasses

Frimley Bypass was due to open on 10 October 1977. Cost £0.75 million.

Whitehill and Bordon Relief Road - the 2.6 mile road was opened on 7 January 2019 by Rob Humby, County Council Executive Member for Transport and Environment, and Dave Axam, Head of the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership. The northern phase 1 Louisburg Avenue section serving the former barracks site had opened in December 2016. The southern phase 2 section A from junction 1 to 2 had opened in June 2018 leaving the centre section B to open in January 2019. There was a short stretch of dual carriageway at the northern end.