B4507
B4507 | ||||||||||
Location Map ( geo) | ||||||||||
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From: | Wantage (SU398876) | |||||||||
To: | Ashbury (SU265850) | |||||||||
Distance: | 9.2 miles (14.8 km) | |||||||||
Meets: | A338, B4001, B4000 | |||||||||
Former Number(s): | B4001 | |||||||||
Highway Authorities | ||||||||||
Traditional Counties | ||||||||||
Route outline (key) | ||||||||||
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Route
The B4507 is an east-west route running along the southern edge of the Vale of White Horse in the north-west of the traditional county of Berkshire (today administered by Oxfordshire County Council). The road is, in fact, a short part of the prehistoric Icknield Way – connecting Norfolk to Wiltshire – and here running along the northern spring line of the Berkshire Downs.
Starting on the A338 to the south of Wantage town centre, the road heads west, leaving the town via Portway and Ickleton Road. After climbing through Challow it continues to Childrey Lane End, where it crosses the B4001, and Sparsholt Lane End. After passing the Blowing Stone to the south of Kingston Lisle the route becomes more undulating as it passes several villages including Woolstone and Knighton before terminating on the B4000 in the village of Ashbury.
History
As first delineated in the early 1930s the B4507 took over what had previously been the first 4.5 km of the original route of the B4001 from Wallingford Street in Wantage westward as far as Childrey Lane End (where the B4001 turned south). The first 600-metre length of this route (along Ormond Road) has much more recently been reclassified as a section of the A338.
From Childrey Lane End the B4507 continued on its present course west to Ashbury, but until the early 1970s it continued for a further 9 km or so, entering Wiltshire and passing through the villages of Bishopstone and Wanborough before terminating on the A419 some 250 metres north-west of its junction with the A345 at Commonhead (a.k.a. Common Head, especially on older maps).
This final section west of Ashbury is now unclassified, and indeed some 150 m of the final 600 m of this stretch have been obliterated by the construction of the realigned and much wider A419 (today's Swindon eastern bypass), with the former B4507 southwest of this point now reduced to a footpath running between the houses of the modern Liden housing estate.