A464
A464 | ||||||||||
Location Map ( geo) | ||||||||||
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From: | Oaken (SJ844025) | |||||||||
To: | Telford (SJ712080) | |||||||||
Via: | Shifnal | |||||||||
Distance: | 10 miles (16.1 km) | |||||||||
Meets: | A41, A4169, B4379, M54, A4640, A442 | |||||||||
Former Number(s): | A41 | |||||||||
Old route now: | B5061 | |||||||||
Primary Destinations | ||||||||||
Highway Authorities | ||||||||||
Traditional Counties | ||||||||||
Route outline (key) | ||||||||||
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For the original, a road which also started in Oaken but ran to Nantwich, see A464 (Oaken - Nantwich).
The A464 is a fairly nondescript rural A-road that parallels the M54, but is interesting historically as forming part of Telford's Holyhead Road from London to Dublin.
Route
The road starts on the A41 at Oaken, northwest of Wolverhampton. It passes through no towns or villages of note until it reaches the small town of Shifnal. Upon reaching the town centre, the road turns very sharply left under a railway bridge carrying the Wolverhampton - Shrewsbury Line and heads towards Telford, passing Telford services on the way to M54 junction 4.
The route then turns left at the motorway junction, and is a good-standard well-aligned dual carriageway passing through the Stafford Park industrial estate until it meets the A442 Queensway (also known as The Eastern Primary) near Telford Town Centre, where it terminates.
History
This road formed part of Thomas Telford's Holyhead Road, as part of the historic London to Holyhead coaching road that went via the city centres of Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton rather than via the route via A5 Watling Street.
Between M54 junction 4 and Telford, the road bears no resemblance to the Holyhead Road, having been changed during the construction of the M54 in 1983. The road originally carried straight across the line of the motorway, passing the Telford Campus of Wolverhampton University and the Head Office of the PDSA, before heading into Oakengates, where it met the original route of the A5.
In the original 1922 numbering scheme, what is now the route of the A464 between M54 junction 4 and Oaken was originally allocated the A41 number following the Holyhead Road to Oakengates, whilst the A464 number was allocated to the opposite route at Oaken. This numbering was then reversed in the 1935 Road numbering revision, as the A41 was extended to Birkenhead.
Almost immediately, the westernmost section in Oakengates was truncated by the construction of the St. Georges Bypass in the late 1930s, which then became part of the A5, before being truncated slightly further to Priorslee Roundabout in 1975 with the construction of the first section of the M54, the Wellington Bypass.
There have been many proposals for a bypass of Shifnal, which would have carried the A464 to the west of the village; most notably as an alternative to the construction of M54. Through traffic along the A464 is now discouraged along the non-primary section between the M54 and A41, to the extent that neither Wolverhampton nor Telford are now signed via that route (instead being signed via the longer route using A41 and M54 until reaching Shifnal in the appropriate direction.
Within the 1946 Trunk Roads Act, the route was Trunked as the "Northwest of Wolverhampton - Oakengates Trunk Road", and allocated the number T50 for internal Ministry purposes. It was then detrunked in its entirety in 1984 just after the opening of M54[1].
References
- ↑ London Gazette, 21 November 1984 - London Gazette (1984) page: 15771