A1-The Great North Road

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Francis Sheppard begins his book London , A History with the words London was founded by the Romans.  That may not be untrue when speaking of London as a city but that is not to say that there were not plenty of people living hereabouts before the Julius Caesar came to look.  Indeed, the Bronze Age fragments of wooden piles driven into the Thames foreshore suggest some sort of walkway or landing stage for a ferry, perhaps even a bridge, long before the Romans started city building.  The pre-historic Great North Road begins in the Thames mud.

That illustrious group of investigators of the Roman roads The Viatores, set the historical scene for descriptions of the Great North Road: There has been persistent reference in topographical works to an ancient road to the North which ran from London to Islington and Highbury, and on through Enfield Chase.  The first mention of it appears to be by William Bedwell in his History of Tottenham High Cross published in 1631.  Bedwell said, "before the wars of the barons in 1210 the great road from the north lay through Hertford, and thence to Hatfield, through the Chace to Southgate, Boes (Bowes Farm), Wood Green, Dou'cotes (Ducketts Manor), along to a stone bridge near the confines of Tottenham, Hornsey, and Stoke Newington, and so athrough Islington to London, but it was turned about 410 years ago by the people of Ware".  This passage seems to describe a rout along the Cockfosters road to Southgate and thence by the Green Lanes to Islington.  It is probable that Bedwell obtained his information about the turning of the road by the people of Ware from Camden's Britannia, for in Philémon Holland's English translation of this (London, 1610, p.410) we havw "when Barons were against King John this Ware turned London highway to it".  William Maitland in 1756 (History of London, Vol I. p. 17) went so far as to call it Ermine Street.  His passage runs, "Wherefore I am persuaded that the Ermine Street passed through the said gate [Cripplegate] and took its way by Highbury Barn to Stroud Green, where there is a much greater appearance of a Military Way than in any other place in the neighbourhood of London ... it being still in many places higher than the fields on each side, and continues in equal breadth to Hornsey."  This tradition of the old road to the north has been repeated, and in some cases elaborated upon, by most  of the topographers of North London and Middlesex, and as recently as 1951 N. G. Brett-Jones in his Middlesex (p. 259) stated that "the last Roman road is from Cripplegate to Stoke Newington, Hornsey, Southgate, and to Potters Bar, one of the gates of Enfield Chase".  As might be expected the route described in the foregoing extracts shows some variation, but is clearly not Ermine Street, which leaves London at Bishopsgate and runs through Stamford Hill and Tottenham, and east of Enfield Chase to Cheshunt.

But where does the modern Great North Road begin?

Bradley records an early advertisement that reads:  From the 26th April, 1658 there will continue to go Stage Coaches from the George without Aldersgate London into the several Cities and Towns...  The coach ran to York on three days per week and once a fortnight to Edinburgh.  A milestone on the Old North Road at Puckeridge shows a distance of 28 miles from Shoreditch Church.

Paterson's road books use Hicks's Hall as the starting point.  Baptist Hicks, first Viscount Campden (1551-1629), followed in his father's business as a mercer, becoming very rich supplying silks to court. Hicks built, at his own cost, a sessions-house for the Middlesex magistrates in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell, on a site granted to the magistrates by James I in 1610. The house, which was known as Hicks's Hall, was opened in 1612, and was used until 1778.

An anonymous correspondent to the Gentlemans' Magazine in 1778 was concerned about the disorganized way in which road distances from London were measured form various places.  He proposed a ...pillar standing in the intersection of Ludgate and Fleet Street, Fleet-ditch and Fleet-market.  As these four ways go E. W. N. & S. and will pierce this great metropolis in most perfect and beautiful manner; this stone should be considered as the centre of all British roads, and its distance from the land's end every way marked on the sides of both corner houses fronting the spectator, as there is no getting to the pillar itself in such a crowded street.  He complains that ...At present every road begins its measurement from a different point... Some roads measure from the Standard in Cheapside; yet I am apt to think that I might go into fifty shops in Cheapside without receiving the least satisfactory account where the Standard stood.

A similar letter appeared in the Penny Magazine in 1835:

Expediency of measuring distances from a Common Centre in London.

The Roman roads in Britain were all from London Stone, still extant in Cannon Street. No defect in our improved modern metropolis is more inconvenient than the want of such a stone, the various roads from London being now measured from ten or eleven different places, two, three, and even four miles distant from each other. The catalogue is curious: Hyde Park Corner and Whitechapel Church; the Surrey side of London Bridge and of Westminster Bridge; Shoreditch Church; Tyburn Turnpike; Holborn Bars (long since removed); "the place where St. Giles's Pound formerly stood;" "the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood;" "the Standard in Cornhill" (of which no tradition remains, its exact site being unknown); and "the Stones End in the Borough," which moves with the extension of the pavement. Thus the actual distance of any place cannot be known without minute inquiry and local knowledge of London. The easy remedy consists in adopting the mileage of the Post Office, when it shall have been re-measured from the new site of that office, the frontage of which grand centre of communication could not be more appropriately adorned than by an obelisk which would become a London Stone, inscribed with the names and distances of large provincial towns, in imitation of that which stood in the Forum of ancient Rome. The vicinity of St. Paul's Cathedral, the most conspicuous object in London, recommends the New Post Office especially for this purpose; and turnpike road trustees would not refuse to accommodate to it their milestones, under the direction of the road-surveyor or of the Post Office.

These proposals for a central pillar in Ludgate Circus or a London Stone outside the Post Office were not adopted so the Great North Road sensibly starts at it's beginning on the north-east side of St. Paul's where St. Martins le Grand, usefully designated the A1, leaves Cheapside and Newgate Street, the A40.

The Great North Road left London by two branch: one from Holburn through Highgate, Stevenage and Biggleswade to Alconbury and the other, usually called the Old North Road, from Shoreditch through Ware, Royston and Huntindon, joining the other branch at Alconbury. According to Webster, The Old North Road is traditionally measured from another starting point in London, Shoreditch church. When the northern mails were despatched from Lombard Street they would proceed up Bishopsgate to join this highway or, despatched from St Martin's-le-Grand, would travel eastwards, by Cheap-side and Old Street, to begin the northward journey from Kingsland Road, where the first turnpike gate barred the way. A second followed at Stamford Hill beyond which lay the mansions of the City merchants who favoured this pleasant suburban retreat. Then came Tottenham, Edmonton, Ponders End, Enfield Highway and Waltham Cross where, immediately north and south of the shattered Eleanor Cross, lay two great posting houses, the Four Swans and the Falcon. The Four Swans, whose gallows sign straddled the highway (one of a fast disappearing number), survived as an inn until recently; the Falcon, where the York Mail made its first change, has also closed.

Writing in the early 1850s, Hughes describes certain shortcomings of the Great North Road's London end in his "General Survey of the Principal Metroploitan Roads". It is interesting to note that the Hatfield Hill by-pass was enabled by the Construction of the railway, one of the few instances where the coming of the railway resulted in an improvement in the road.

The Great North Road By Barnet And Hatfield.

This road, as before explained, is identical with the Holyhead road as far as Barnet.  It goes on through the long street of that place, and passes by Monken Hadley, skirting for a mile and a half on the east side of Wrotham­-park, passing thence by Garwick-corner to Potter's-bar; then on to Littleheath and Swanley-bar, on the east side of Brockman-park, by Bell-bar and Woodside, whence it goes on for a mile through Hatfield-park, the seat of the Marquis of Salisbury; then bends to the north, and skirts the park on the west side as far as the town of Hatfield, through the street of which the descent is very rapid, very crooked, and dangerous. Beyond Hatfield the road goes on by Welwyn and Hitchin to Shefford, Bedford, Highain Ferrers, Kettering, Market Harborough, and Leicester.  Another branch, being in fact the great north road, goes off at Welwyn through Baldock, St. Neot's, Alconbury­hill, Stilton, Stamford, Grantham, Newark, East Retford, Bawtry, Doneaster to York, Leeds, Newcastle, Carlisle, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and all parts of Scotland.

The principal objection to this road near London, is the dangerous and inconvenient hill in the town of Hatfield.  It is singular that this has been allowed to exist so many years, when the slightest observation of the natural drainage of the country would at once point out how it might be avoided.  For a mile and a half before approaching Hatfield, the valley in which the road ought to pass, here distant about half a mile to the west, is distinctly visible.  As the Great Northern railway is to pass down this valley for some miles, altogether on the west side of Hatfield-park, an arrangement has been made, and an Act of Parlia­ment obtained, for carrying the road alongside the railway for several miles, by means of which the highly objection­able hill in the town of Hatfield will be entirely avoided, and the new piece of road will join the present one at the lower and northern end of the town, where the ground is quite flat.

Many other objections might be taken, not only to the rest of the road between Hatfield and St. Alban's, but to the whole of the road to London.  It appears, in fact, that the whole of the first fourteen miles, namely, from London to Potter's-bar, would be improved by adopting the road now used by some of the Hatfield coaches, by Ball's pond, east of Hornsey, Southgate, be­tween Beech hill and Trent-park, and joining the present road at Potter's-bar.  This road is not longer than the present turnpike road, which it entirely avoids.  Highgate­hill, and the summit corresponding with Barnet-hill, is crossed under much more advantageous circumstances.

The R.A.C. Routes to Scotland, in the 1930s, described the Great North Road as starting at: London, Marble Arch. From Oxford Street take 1st on left, Great Cumberland Place; 2nd on right, Seymour Street; 2nd on left, Portman Square.  Straight on by Gloucester Place across Marylebone Road to Park Road.  Keep left there.  Bear left at end by church, then to right from St. John's Wood Road Station to Wellington Road and straight ahead to Swiss Cottage. 

John Chaple has some ideas about the Roman route into London from the south east.

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