A804 (Kelvingrove - Townhead)

This article is about the original A804 that ran west to east through Finnieston and Glasgow city centre.
For the present A804 Glasgow Inner Ring Road, see A804.

Original route

The original A804, like the current version, is entirely within the city of Glasgow. It followed two of Glasgow's busiest roads, one of which, Sauchiehall Street, has retained or even enhanced its fame; the other, Parliamentary Road, has been completely wiped from the maps following a 1960s gentrification of central Glasgow and the suburb of Townhead.

Sauchiehall Street

The now-pedestrianised Sauciehall Street

The original A804, when classified in 1922 started at the junction of Argyle and Sauchiehall Streets, outside the famous Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. Argyle Street started life as the A82, but quite quickly changed to A814 when the A82 routing was pushed north to the newly extended Great Western Road. Nowadays the A814 has also shifted away on to the Clydeside Expressway and the entire junction is now unclassified. The first mile of Sauchiehall Street remains a major thoroughfare to this day, although the last half-mile was pedestrianised in the 1970s. Along the way, the original A804 crosses its replacement at the historic location of Charing Cross, high above the M8 which is cut down beneath street level at this point.

Parliamentary Road

From the junction with Buchanan Street (originally A805, later A82), the route followed a street called Parliamentary Road. It doesn't exist on the ground any more, having been built atop after the road was declassified and its routing changed to match that of the M8. Parliamentary Road met Sauchiehall Street end-on, albeit at a different angle, and crossed east by northeast under what is now the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre and across North Hanover Street. The now-pedestrianised central walkway of the housing estate bounded by Kennedy Street and St Mungo's Street was the last section of the route, with an eventual terminus at a T-junction on the A803 crossroads in Townhead. M8 Junction 15 irrevocably changed this terminus.

Fate

Along with the other large-scale changes to central Glasgow, this road was declassified (and mostly destroyed, as described above) when the M8 here began construction. The new A804 would follow a different routing altogether, alongside and partially underneath the new motorway. The only common thread between the two A804s is their eastern terminus at a junction with the A8 Alexandra Parade.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Glasgow (Sauciehall Street and Parliamentary Road)