A1-The Great North Road
This website is a very unfinished but evolving e-book about the history and geography of the Great North Road. If you have some information that relates to the road and would like to contribute it to this site, I would love to hear from you. Send me an e-mail: biff@biffvernon.freeserve.co.uk
Let us travel, and wherever we find no facility for traveling from a city to a town, from a village to a hamlet, we may pronounce the people to be barbarous"--Abbe Raynal
The opening up of the internal communications of a country is undoubtedly the first and most important element of its growth in commerce and civilization"--Richard Cobden
The Road... is the humblest and the most subtle... but the greatest and the most original of the spells which are inherited from the earliest pioneers of our race... It is older than building... before we were quite men, we knew it.
The road had the merit of all savage trails, and of all the tracks a man still makes who is a-foot and free and can make by the shortest line for his goal: it enjoyed the hills. -- Hillaire Belloc, The Old Road (1904)
There are at least half a dozen Great North Roads; there is one in America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, but we will ignore these modern upstart impostors and stay with the original. (New Zealand also has a Great South Road.) There is shorter Great North Road through Dublin, another Great North Road inside a Welsh cave called Dan-yr-Ogof and also a rock face in the Peak District.
The Great North Road is the largest, longest object in the country. It is the oldest object, at least in the manner of my grandfather’s scythe, with its new blade and its new handle.
The Great North Road is a great road that leads north from London to Edinburgh. Or it’s a road that leads from the north (which is great) southwards. Road signs in the south read “A1 The North”, while in the north they read “A1 The South”. In between they are more ambiguous; “A1 The North The South”, sometimes accompanied by helpful, ambiguity-relieving arrows. Sometimes not.
Wansford
Let’s start near the middle, at Northallerton. But Northallerton is not on the A1, you protest, reaching for a road atlas. That’s right, the A1 passes 6 miles to the west, bringing fame to Leeming Bar, though missing even this hamlet by a couple of hundred yards. Yet a tourist guide clearly states, Northallerton was a centre of travel during the stagecoach era. Several routes passed through the town, of which the most important was the Great North Road between London and Edinburgh. The modern route of the A1 seems arranged to allow cars and lorries to travel unimpeded for long distances north and south without actually going anywhere in particular. In fact it deliberately bypasses everything of interest. This is a good thing. It allows us to take our time to enjoy The Great North Road without being run over.
So first to clear up any misunderstanding. The route between Edinburgh and London has shifted its path throughout its length and its history, a braided stream of communication. The A1 is a road so designated by government, in places following a long-used track, in others deviating across pastures new. My story is about The Great North Road as a concept, a state of mind, not just a strip of tarmac. But then, until recently, a road was not so much a material existence but rather a right of way, the customary and legal right to pass from one place to another and if the regular route was too muddy then folk had the right to sidestep. As the Webbs put it: ...it was 'the good passage' that constituted the highway, and not only 'the beaten track', so that if the beaten track became (as it invariably did in wet weather) 'foundrous' the King's subjects might diverge from it, in their right of passage, even to the extent of 'going upon the corn'. Wet or not, I will feel free to wander from the straight and narrow, to look at whatever catches my eye in the vicinity of the road. The symbiosis of road and general human activity, from earliest times, will explain the modern geography.
We may search for the ghosts of ancient trackways but modern maps show three roads: the oldest is Roman, named variously Ermine Street or Dere Street, mostly straight sections, with occasional abrupt changes of direction; the newest is the present A1, all smooth low-radius curves for fast driving; and between these, time-wise, runs the Great North Road of intervening centuries, wiggling its way from village to town. The Romans built their road for strategic communications between military bases and took little notice of the physical landscape let alone the existing settlement patterns. The modern A1 brings us full circle. Transport over big distances is the thing. The Great North Road served an extra purpose. Not only was London linked to Edinburgh but also, and to some people more importantly, Felton was linked to Newton-on-the-Moor, and North and South Charlton were connected. Curiously, there is only one city, Newcastle, touched by the A1 between London and Edinburgh. Doncaster, despite the best efforts of the locals, is still a town and York, on the old Great North Road, is way off the A1. Lincoln was on the Roman road until the Trent was bridged at Newark. So our road goes through a lot of empty spaces between small towns and villages. Typically English.
In many places the three roads occupy the same space, if not the same time, but the places where and the reasons why they diverge are a theme of this book.
Addison speaks of change when introducing his book on the old roads:
I remember that when I followed Professor Hoskins in his progress of interpretation along his chosen length of the Fosse Way, my mind immediately took up the challenge in relation to the through-way that in those days I knew best, the Great North Road. I knew, of course, that as the Fosse Way had been deviated - although only to a minor extent - so Ermine street had been deviated to form the Old North Road, which in turn was deviated when coaches replaced wagons to is historic line as a great coaching road figuring in a host of novels as well as in accounts of travel. But I hadn't then fully appreciated the inevitability of maintaining its course across Yorkshire through every vicissitude, simply because it was only by crossing the mouth of every dale in succession that access could be gained to the countryside that produced metal before the Romans came, wool when the Cistercians made the fells one vast sheep walk, and the products of cottage industries later in all the dale villages. Nor did I fully appreciate how much we can learn about the modifications we observe in the landscape we drive through from the names of the villages, which along the Great North Road record Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norse, and Celtic settlement. No-one can fail to be impressed by the massive bridges that span the rivers pouring down from the Pennines; but only by knowing something of the place-name origins can we see the significance of the river-names that strong-wristed masons - and Yorkshire was famous for them - had carved into the parapets. And now, in the interests of soul-destroying speed, this great highway has again been deviated to bypass the very towns and villages it was created and re-created to sustain.
The origins of the actual name, Great North Road, are obscure. As Room says: The name itself is relatively modern, with one of its earliest records in a tithe award of only 1849. Towards the end of the 19th century the name must have been familiar enough to demand no introduction or explanation from Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Harper who used in as a title to their books.
Traffic has ebbed and flowed with technology. Consider the lull between the coaching days and the motor car when the railways held sway. Here is Arthur Norway, writing of the Great North Road in 1899:
"Whether it was great or otherwise is of little moment now, except to cyclists and ragged beggermen; for they alone out of the whole community travel its deserted ways which were once so full of noisy life, and mark how ancient wayside inns have lost their occupation and descended into farms or cottages; while as each easy hill surmounted discloses new lengths of the broad old highway running straight and smooth between wide grassy borders, the very spaciousness and emptiness of the road possess a certain dignity and grandeur which are suggestive of long vanished pomps and noble spectacles such as we shall never see again."
And here C. W. Scott-Giles takes a long view through time with verse:
The Road Goes On
Faint from the downs, where age-old trackways ravel
Turf, wind-swept, rain-washed for unnumbered years,
Comes to us still the stir of ancient travel,
Of men who knew not they were pioneers:
The trader by his customed landmarks bounded,
The huntsman his obscurer paths upon -
By heel and hoof the highway first was founded,
To tire and tractor-belt the road goes on.
On though the storms of conquest swept the island,
And farther, when the eagle-bearing host,
Straight as an eagle's flight, o'er plain and highland
Banked, paved, and drove the ways from Wall to coast;
Till twilight fell on town and camp forsaken,
From Portus Dubris to far Camelon,
And by barbarian floods the land o'ertaken -
Rome's rule was broken; but her roads went on.
And through the coloured medieval pages
The old roads run like script, with glittering scenes
Of pomp, and pageantry, and pilgrimages -
Merchants and friars, knights and kings and queens;
A cavalcade of England in the blending,
Of fighting factions lost, and freedom won;
While wayside hermits bridge and path are mending,
That to God's house the road may still go on.
On, too, to spacious days and wide endeavour;
Roads to the sea, the seas to empire, lead.
the wares of all the world flow in, and ever
Mart must be moving, commerce cries for speed.
Wheels on the highway, new-made for their turning;
Wheels in the mill - our pastorale is gone;
Wheels within wheels the milestones faster spurning;
And underneath, the patient road goes on.
Whither, old roads, new-built, twin-tracked, wide-bordered?
What mighty purpose are you set upon?
Ask Man, who this transformation ordered.
We only know our duty - to go on.
'Mart must be moving, commerce cries for speed.' Jackman collected evidence from various sources to produce this description of speed on the Great North Road: In 1754 the journey between London and Edinburgh required ten days in summer and twelve in winter. In the summer of 1776 the flying coach performed the same distance in four days. In 1818 the mail coach took only fifty-nine hours, and the stage coach sixty-one hours; but even these were still further reduced, for in 1836 the mail coach was timed through in forty-five and one-half hours, at an average speed of nine and one-half miles an hour, exclusive of stoppages for meals and official work. Thus it will be seen that the time required in 1836 was practically one-fifth of that required in 1754 Jackman goes on to make similar comparisons for other routes with the general conclusion that journey times over long distances were, by 1835, reduced to about a quarter or fifth of what they had been eighty years before. But he points out that much of this saving in journey time was achieved by not spending time at the inn for overnight stops. Actual road speed had not increased so dramatically. By the 1830s fast mails were averaging nine or ten miles per hour, perhaps double the typical speeds of coaches in the mid 18th century.
So how did the Great North Road become the A1 ?
NUMBERING OF ROADS
WHEREAS the proceeds of motor taxation could only be used by the old Road Board to subsidise improvements and new roads, one result of the Road Acts, 1920, was to make the Road Fund available for grants to the highway Authorities towards the cost of actual road maintenance. The first effect of this novel principle was to make it necessary for the new Ministry of Transport to classify the roads or the country and to indicate clearly those which were considered of sufficient importance to qualify for a grant towards upkeep.
Under the scheme of classification arid numbering which was adopted, the principal roads throughout the country were divided into two classes. Half the annual cost of maintenance is paid from the Road Fund in the case of roads in Class I and one quarter (now increased to one third) for those in class II. In addition, each classified road has been given a number, and the number is prefixed either by the letter A, indicating Class I roads, or the letter B for those in Class II.
Gradually, in accordance with the instructions of the Ministry, these numbers are being fixed to the signposts on the roads themselves. Sometimes the numbers are a useful aid in finding one's way, and therefore in the present edition of this book they appear in all the itineraries.
It is important, however, to remember that out of a total mileage of all roads in England and Wales of 153,661, only about 20,000 miles are in Class I arid 12,000 miles in Class II - approximately one-fifth of the total.
AA Road Book c. 1926Major Roads of Great Britain is a website devoted to, well, the major roads of Britain. Visit it rather than let me describe it.
But let's go back a few years to a time when wheeled transport was slower than walking pace. The image below (click it to get a decent view) comes from the Luttrell Psalter, an early 14th century prayer book commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell. It was reproduced in Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, published in 1884, from whence this copy was made.
An English Carriage of the Fourteenth Century
Dr Dianne Tillotson, writing about medieval travel on her website, Medieval Writing, says: It is sometimes asserted that medieval people did not get about much. It is undoubtedly true that a great many people, possible most ordinary rural or town dwellers, may have been born, lived and died in the same place. However, there were groups of people who did travel, and given the conditions of the time, they travelled most adventurously and sometimes very far. Soldiers went across the country or to the exotic eastern Mediterranean. Traders from the Vikings to the merchant adventurers of the later middle ages voyaged to many exotic ports. Pilgrims undertook journeys to the nearest popular shrine, or headed off to Compostella or the Holy Land. Bishops went to Rome and papal emissaries went out to check out the remote corners of Christendom. Missionaries inserted themselves into potentially hostile parts of Europe in the early middle ages, and later practitioners ended up travelling as far as China. The craftsmen who worked on the great Romanesque and Gothic buildings were an international travelling elite. The marriages of royalty tended to be diplomatic affairs between competing aristocrats in different countries, so that courtiers, servants and followers of the medieval glitterati moved from country to country. The world was a completely different size, depending on who you were and what your job was.
Anderson, in 1932, concludes his book on the Roads of England with words that may be just as pertinent when transposed 70 years:
The history of the road is not yet finished. We have seen how the roads were used by the ancient cattle drivers, by the Roman legions, the geese going to market, the world of fashion going to the spas, by kings and vagabonds and all manner of innumerable travellers right down through the ages. We are left to wonder, what purpose will be served by our roads in the future? What a history is yet to be written of the roads of England! The thought is stimulating but it saddens as well. All over the country the roads are being reconstructed... out of thousands of little winding lanes that grew up naturally to meet the needs of people who liked to use such things, modern roads are being built. Now there is scarcely a patch of genuine old road left in England. The old roads of England and all the gay company on them are to us like things of another world - and their disappearance is the price that we must pay for progress: but it is also our contribution to the long history of the roads of England.
So what do we find when we look at the Great North Road? A history of England perhaps?
Bronze age megaliths at Boroughbridge and a neolithic landscape to the north through Yorkshire. The mysterious cup and ring marks on Northumbrian rocks near Wooler. Transport technology with the Bronze Age Ferriby boats used to cross the Humber and nearby Iron age chariot burials. Roman battles with the natives and , of course, their roads. The journeys of St. Cuthbert's corpse and Queen Eleanor's corpse. The desperate journey of King Harold and the subsequent movements of Normans as they came to wreck destruction from York northwards. The constant to-ing and fro-ing of people, power, influence and armies across the Scottish border. James the sixth travels down the road to become James the first. Katherine Parr outlived Henry in her home at Snape but Mary fared worse after leaving Fotheringay. King John dies at Newark and so does Charles' hopes in the civil war. Cromwell had been born and bred down the road at Huntingdon. Stephenson's Rocket started work at Darlington, after travelling, by road, from Newcastle.
Of churches (or lack thereof). You won't find much about the churches in the many places encountered on my account of the road. This is mostly because all churches have been written about elsewhere and I have little to add. I will quote the following precedent from Packinton's 1934 book of English Villages: If you read in a guide book, as I read of one village, that "The Church is Perp. Note squint and pass on," you would join with me, I am sure, in resolving at once that you would neither note the squint nor pass on. It may be thought, indeed, that I have gone too far in my determination not to note the squint, for in talking of the villages I have not attempted to describe churches. It goes without saying that the church is usually the most interesting building in the village, and has long outlived the flimsy houses which it once served. But an adequate description of the village church may be found in any guide-book, and I have therefore confined myself - apart from an occasional involuntary remark - to talking of the church only in relation to the village.
Tangentially, there is also an Old Road South.
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003