B8051
B8051 | |||||||
Location Map ( geo) | |||||||
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From: | St Ninians (NS794913) | ||||||
To: | King's Knot (NS786936) | ||||||
Distance: | 1.9 miles (3.1 km) | ||||||
Meets: | A9, A872, A811 | ||||||
Former Number(s): | B8052, A811 | ||||||
Old route now: | A811 | ||||||
Highway Authorities | |||||||
Traditional Counties | |||||||
Route outline (key) | |||||||
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Route
The B8051 is signed as a ring road around the western side of Stirling, although it is doubtful whether it actually performs such a service, with the A9 throughpass being a good route that copes well with traffic flows much of the time.
The southern end of the B8051 is, in fact, the old route of the A9, which heads north along St Ninians Main Street and onto Newhouse. The road then TOTSOs left at a traffic-light-controlled crossroads onto Snowdon Place, the junction being the former start of the route, before forking right into Drummond Place. This is Stirling's leafy Victorian suburb, with grand villas set behind high hedges and garden walls. The small park at this junction is dwarfed by the massive King's Park found at the next. There is a mini roundabout on Kings Park Road paired with another a few yards to the right, which allows the B8051 to dogleg across into Victoria Place.
The road heads north again and continues ahead at the next roundabout into Queens Road. At the next roundabout, the route turns left onto Dumbarton Road, the former line of the A811, and only recently changed. Today this is the last leg of the B8051, which comes to an end on the A811 at the next roundabout. However, in the past the northern arm of the A811 was the B8051, heading north along Raploch Road to meet the A84 on Drip Road in Raploch itself. The roads in this area have, however, all been rerouted in the last few years to utilise the new roads through the parkland to the west of the city centre, and take traffic away from the old suburban streets of Raploch and the city centre.
History
As hinted at above, the history of this route is somewhat convoluted. None of the route was classified in 1922, and it seems to have been the early 1930s before the B8051 came into existence, at that time running along Raploch Road between the A811 and A84 - this section is no longer part of the route!
By 1946, the route had been extended south to meet the then-A9 at St Ninians Road. The 1971 OS One Inch map shows the new A9 route and its former line has been renumbered B8052, but the latter was quickly cut back to the centre of town and so the B8051 was extended to its present southern terminus, with the northern end of St Ninians Road becoming unclassified. The final change occurred in the 2010s, when first the A84 was taken out of Raploch and then the A811 foreshortened to finish on the A84 instead of passing into the city centre, thus removing all of the original B8051 section from the modern route.