B5273

Oxcliffe Road

The B5273 is a semi-urban B-road in north Lancashire.

The road starts at traffic lights on the A589 Heysham Road, to the north of Heysham village centre and only a short distance inland. It heads east along the residential Oxcliffe Road before going over the Heysham Branch Line.

There is a short section of open country (but without the speed limit to match) before the road reaches the suburbs of Morecambe and skirts the edge of the urban area. Through traffic is directed to turn left onto the unclassified Westcliffe Drive (and thence via Westgate onto the A589). However, the B5273 continues ahead. After a flat, straight section it climbs to curve to the right and then skirts an industrial estate before reaching a roundabout on the A683.

Although road signs would have us believe otherwise, the B5273 continues across the roundabout to bear left at the next roundabout. The road goes along Ovangle Road and crosses a dismantled railway line (now a footpath) before ending at a roundabout back on the A589.

This eastern end of the B5273 dates back to a rerouting of the A589 in the late 1920s. Prior to then the B5273 turned east along Salt Ayre Lane rather than crossing the railway line on Ovangle Road (which did not exist in 1922). It crossed the railway line by the long-gone Scale Hall station (at a point now closed to traffic of any kind) before reaching what is now the A589 Morecambe Road. It continued east under the West Coast Main Line to end on the A6 to the north of Skerton Bridge in Lancaster. The B5273 was thus in the unusual position of crossing an entire road zone in under five miles.

Most of the original eastern end of the B5273 is now the A589 from Lancaster to Morecambe; however, a short distance is unclassified and closed to through traffic as the A589 takes a more northerly course through Scale Hall.