A1-The Great North Road

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Road Writers

Almost as interesting a the road itself, are the writings of people who, down the ages and along the miles, have been inspired to put pen to paper by some aspect of the road, be it in fiction or descriptive writing.  As we travel I will scatter snippets along the way but here, as appetizer, I introduce a few of the characters whose lives have been touched by the Great North Road.

The Ravenna Cosmography is a list of places in the Roman Empire recorded by monks at Ravenna in the 7th century.  Four manuscript pages deal with the British Isles.

John Aston was 'Privy Chamber-man Extraordinary' to the king when he wrote his journal in the spring of 1639.  He traveled with, or in advance of the king, during April, May and June, from York to Berwick-on-Tweed.  It seems the Scottish were a cause for concern for the king, who had a cunning plan involving gathering an army and hanging about in York for a while.  The Scottish were then meant to see sense and tow the line.  It didn't quite work out so the king advanced to Berwick and hung about there in a menacing fashion.  This did eventually work and Aston's journal involves describing a lot of banqueting rather than battling in Berwick (or Barwicke as he spelled it).  Pieces of his journal appear on the Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland pages.

Renault advert.

This image was used in Renault Laguna adverts in Spring 2000 at the introduction of the letter Y in registration plates.  Did the ad copywriter have in mind the divergence of Old Great North Road and new A1?

The development of railways from the 1830s led to a rapid decline in the use of roads but it was not long before the bicycle appeared, heralding a revival in road use that pre-empted the motor car.  Thomas Burke, writing in 1946, recounts a report of a cycle tour on The Great North Road from London to Newcastle, published in a handbook on cycling in 1873.  That's a decade before the safety bicycle started to displace the boneshakers and ordinaries or penny-farthings.

The party met at six in the morning, at the King's Arms Hotel, Kensington, and, after "a capital breakfast," they set out, escorted to the edge of London by more prudent members of the club, who there gave them God-speed on their foolhardy adventure.  They followed the Great North Road to Potter's Bar, where they made their first halt (one of many) for refreshment, and where the landlord gave them a cordial recep­tion, and his daughter presented each of the quartet with “a flower."  On to Welwyn, where they "halted for refreshments"; then through Stevenage to Baldock, where they dined, and rested for two hours.  Then to Biggleswade, where they found a country fair in progress, and found themselves of greater interest than any of the side-shows.  A large crowd gathered to watch them oil their machines. Then on to Eaton Socon (halt for refreshments) and so to Buckden where they ran into so heavy a rainstorm that they put up for the night. They had covered 65 miles.  Next day they followed the road through Stilton, Norman Cross, and Wansford to Stamford. The road in that district was of lime-stone, and the rains had so washed them that they could hardly get along; the wheel-ruts being six inches deep and covering all the road.  After "refreshments" at Stamford, they went on until they reached the hundredth milestone. from London, when they dismounted and cheered, and had more "refreshment," this time from their pocket-flasks.  Then on to Grantham, where they took a stroll round the town and found it "well worth seeing."  Then on to Newark through another rainstorm, which drenched them.  They stayed the night at Newark, and next day went on to Sutton-on-Trent.  All through Rutland and Lincolnshire they noted the intense dislike shown to their machines by the horses, which in other counties had shown no disturbance.

From Sutton-on-Trent they went on through Tuxford to East Retford which they found "a very nice town, with several good hotels", which suggests that "refreshments" were double and treble.  Then on to Scrooby, Bawtry, and so to Doncaster, where they had "a very good dinner."  After dinner, they went on through Robin Hood's Well to Went Bridge, where they stayed the night at the Bay Horse.  In the morning they were delayed by rain, but as at midday it showed no sign of stopping, they went on to Ferrybridge, where they "were compelled to remain at an hotel for the purpose of drying our clothes,"  When the clothes were dry, they remounted and went on to Abberford, and halted at the Swan "for refreshments," Then on to Wetherby, where they stayed the night, "spending a merry evening with a lot of jolly Yorkshiremen, the jovial song lending a charm to the entertainment."

At nine o'clock next morning they resumed their journey, and did a ten-mile run to Boroughbridge, where they took breakfast.  After breakfast they made a run of twenty-five miles over an excellent road, but there was scarcely a house to be seen.  They found no place where they could "halt for refreshments" until they reached Catterick Bridge, and the author advised intending travellers through Yorkshire to "provide themselves with everything needful beforehand."  (Pocket-flask?) At Catterick Bridge they dined, and then went on to Darlington, where they put up.  Next day they pedalled through Aycliffe to Durham, on good roads, and at the Half Moon they had a “capital dinner.”  And so to Newcastle, 277 miles in six days.

 Richard Braithwaite was a poet, born at Burneshead, near Kendal, in 1588, educated at Oxford and is believed to have served with the Royalist army in the Civil War.  He was the author of many works, some of which are generally disparaged in the annals of literary criticism.  The best known is Drunken Barnaby’s Four Journeys to the North of England, which records his pilgrimages through England, written in rhymed Latin and doggerel English verse, first published in 1638.  There are descriptions of several places and events along the Great North Road such as Robin Hood's Well and the Hole in the Wall, Stamford.  He is pretty rude about Stamford, claiming it swarmed with beggars, but he seemed to like Sarah, the landlady of the Hole in the Wall:

Her I sued, suited, sorted

Bussed, boused, sneesed, snorted:

Often sat she, when she got up,

All her phrase was, 'Drink thy pot up'

Pontefract has been long celebrated for its gardens and nurseries, and the finest liquorice in the kingdom, for which it is thus noticed by Drunken Barnaby:

Veni Pomfret, ubi miram

Arcem, Angus regibus diram;

Laseris ortu celebrandam,

Varils gestis memorandam:

Nec in Pomfret repens certior,

Quam pauperculus inertior.

Drunken Barnaby records the story of John Bartendale, a piper and citizen of York, who was found guilty of felony.  He was hanged on Knavesmire on March 27th, 1643, and after suspension for the best part of an hour was cut down and interred on the spot.  A little while afterwards a Mr. Vavasour, riding past the spot, saw the earth move and instructed his servant to procure a spade and release the unfortunate wretch.  Bartedndale was revived, sat up and enquired where he was, equally amazed as the spectators.  He was again tried at York castle but this time acquitted and gained his livelihood as an ostler. 

"Here a piper apprehended,

Was found guilty and suspended,

Being led to fatal gallows,

Boys did cry 'Where is thy bellows?'

Ever must though cease thy turning,

Answered he for all thy cunning,

You may fail in your prediction.

Which did happen without fiction

For cut down and quick interred,

Earth rejected which was buried,

Half alive and dead he rises,

Got a pardon next assizes,

And in York continued blowing-

Yet a sense of goodness showing."

Tollerton is about 10 miles north of York, just west of the York to Thirsk section of the Great North Road.  Drunken Barnaby gives the horse racing here an early mention:

"Thence to Towlerton, where those stagers,

Or horses courses run for wagers;

Near to the highway the course is,

Where they ride and run their horses;

But still on our journey went we,

First or last did like content me."

Richard Braithwaite died at East Appleton, a hamlet a mile south of Catterick, in 1673, a facetious and eccentric genius.  The following monumental inscription to his memory appears in Catterick Church:

Juxta sitae sunt

Richardi Braithwaite

De Burneshead, in comitate

Westmorelandae armigeri, et

Mariae, ejus conjugis, Reliquiae.

Ille quarto die Maii, anno, 1673,

Donatus est; haec undecimo Aprilis 1681.

Supremum diem obiit.  Horum filius

Unicus, Strafford Braithwaite, Eques

Auratus, adversus Mauros Christiani

Nominis hostes infestissimos, fortiter

Dimicans, occubuit. Cujus Cineres

Tingi in Mauritania Tingitana

Humantur.

Requiescant in Pace.

Fynes Moryson (1566-1614) travelled on foot throughout Europe and in 1594 he visited Italy, which was the source for "Ten Year's Travel" (1617), one of the first guides to be used by English travellers.  It contains an early description of Edinburgh.

William Worcester: Itineraries ed. J.Harvey (1969). Travels in England 1477-80.

Francis Grose 1731-1791  was Adjutant and Paymaster in the Surrey Militia, but was unable to keep proper accounts and had to foot the losses himself.  He took up the career of drawing after his father, the jeweler of George II's crown, died and left him an independent income. He embarked on a survey of the "Antiquities of Britain", serially publishing  The Antiquities of England and Wales, from 1774 to 1787.   His Rules for Drawing Caricatures, with an Essay on Comic Painting  were published in 1788 and 1791, with seventeen plates etched by Grose.  At the same time he was compiling dictionaries, glossaries and a hilarious volume entitled: Advice to Officers of the British Army (published 1782). He become a friend of Robert Burns, who celebrated him in verse but moved to Ireland to "save from impending oblivion her mouldering monuments," but died shortly after arriving in 1791.

Rob Witcher, a post-graduate student in archaeology at the University of Leicester, wrote the following piece, here extracted from his article in British Archaeology, no 27, September 1997

Roman roads that reshaped the land

Mention the Romans, and one of the first things that people tend to think about is Roman roads. The perception is of precisely engineered, rigidly straight roads, cutting through the landscape – supremely functional objects, built to serve military and commercial ends. 

It is, of course, too narrow a perception. Not all the roads of Roman Britain were new military highways – many were winding, unpaved, pre-existing routes, parts of a highly organised landscape. Nor were Roman roads used exclusively by the army or by Roman officials. In short, there is no definitive type of Roman road. 

Above all, roads were more than just functional objects that allowed people to travel from one place to another. As recent opposition to modern road-building shows, roads can be ideological and political symbols too. Roads are important to people because they affect the ways in which the landscape is perceived, and in particular our understanding of who controls it.

This will have been true in the Roman period no less than today. Roman roads restructured the landscape of Roman Britain both physically and symbolically. They influenced the relationship between Rome and its subjects. They cut across pre-existing boundaries and landholdings, slighting tribal lands and their associated heritage. How did local populations respond? 

Did they perceive the commercial benefits of the new roads, or did they sense an infringement of their freedom and identity? How did local populations feel about these new ways to move across their landscape? Did they consider the straightening and paving of some pre-existing routes as a benefit, or did they sense with resentment that Rome was trying to control and organize how they moved around? 

Beyond major military highways, we can also look at these roads on a more local level. It was the custom in the Roman period that roads leading up to city gates were lined with tombs. How would this have affected people’s perceptions of the roads and cities? It may have meant that anyone entering or leaving the town would have been reminded of its famous sons and daughters, and its collective ancestry. The social status, or ethnicity or gender of the individual will have influenced how he or she felt – they may have felt as if they were making a journey into their past and their identity, as if along an avenue of remembrance; alternatively they may have felt alienated from the dominant Roman establishment. 

Current approaches to roads have been focused too heavily on those aspects most easily addressed through the archaeological or historical record, hence the emphasis on commercial, military and technological approaches. But by putting people back into these landscapes we can start to explore some new perspectives on Roman roads. 

John Taylor, (1580—1653), was an English pamphleteer, commonly called the “ Water-Poet,” He was born in Gloucester and after his apprenticeship to a waterman, served in 1596 in Essex’s fleet, and was present at Flores in 1597 and at the siege of Cadiz.  On his return to England he became a Thames waterman.  He was an expert in the art of self-advertisement, and achieved notoriety by a series of eccentric journeys.  With a companion, he journeyed from London to Queenborough in a paper boat, with two stockfish tied to canes for oars.  The account of his journey, in 1618, to Edinburgh appeared in a pamphlet entitled: The Pennylesse Pilgrimage;or,the Moneylesse Perambulation of John Taylor, alias the King's Magesties Water-Poet; How He TRAVAILED on Foot from London to Edenborough in Scotland, Not Carrying any Money To or Fro, Neither Begging, Borrowing, or Asking Meate, Drinke,or Lodging. ,The Pennylesse Pilgrimage, contains the account of a journey perhaps suggested by Ben Jonson’s celebrated undertaking, though Taylor emphatically denies any intention of burlesque.  He went as far as Aberdeen.  At Leith he met Jonson, who good-naturedly gave him twenty-two shillings to drink his health in England.  In 1614 he published the palindrome: "Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel."

Joseph. Loveday Diary of a tour in 1732 through parts of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, made by John Loveday of Caversham, and now for the first time printed from a MS. in the Possession of his Great-grandson J.E.Taylor Loveday Edinburgh: 1890

A Journey to Edenborough in Scotland by Joseph Taylor ; now first printed from the original manuscript, with notes by William Cowan.  Published by William Brown of Edinburgh in 1903.  Joseph Taylor's manuscript was written in 1705, William Cowan lived from 1851 to 1929.

William Stukeley (1687-1765), born at Holbeach, in Lincolnshire, physician and clergyman, was one of the co-founders of the Society of Antiquities.  He is best known for his competent archaeological fieldwork at Avebury and Stonehenge and elsewhere and rather less competent interpretation of the role of the Druids and the genealogy of Robin Hood.  Between 1710 and 1725 Stukeley made numerous summer expeditions on horseback across the English countryside accurately observing and describing, carefully sketching and drawing, in his quest for antiquities.  Itinerarium Curiosum was the first of his books regarding his antiquarian tours, some of which took Stukeley along the Great North Road.  Some of the one hundred plates in it are notable because besides showing the ancient sites in relation to the surrounding countryside, they show England before the changes brought on by enclosing the commons.  Many of Stukeley's  original plates and the volumes of his manuscript notes and sketches are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

William Cobbett (1763-1835)

Cobbett's tour in Scotland; and in the four northern counties of England; in the autumn of the year 1832 / by William Cobbett, London : Printed by Mills, Jowett and Mills, 1833

Bishop Richard Pococke was born in Southampton in 1704 and, with the help of an Irish uncle, became Bishop of Meath in Ireland. He travelled extensively in Europe and to the Near East and made several journeys through England in the 1750s and 60s recounting detailed observations of landscape and geology, antiquities and modern industry as he found it, in a series of letters, mostly to his sister, Miss Elizabeth Pococke, who lived near Newbury in Berkshire.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), in The Adventures of Roderick Random, first published in 1748, describes a journey from Scotland to London.  There's not a lot of topographical detail but some entertaining, if fictional, adventures through which something of life on the road for the not so wealthy, may be discerned.  The heroes travel much of the way in a waggon, a relatively cheap transport that lumbers along at walking pace, making the journey one of several days with stops at cheap inns that seem characterized by having more guests than beds.  Scottish Libraries Across the Internet (Slainte) provide a short biography of Smollett, the first significant Scottish novelist.

Sir Walter Scott was a regular traveller on the road between London, his home in the Borders and Edinburgh.  His intimate knowledge is reflected in the journey of the heroine of The Heart of Midlothian written in 1830 but relating events on the road a century earlier.

Samuel Smiles, in his History of Roads, quotes from Thomas Mace, more famous as a musician and composer for the  lute than commentator on roads, to tell of the Great North Road.

A curious description of the state of the Great North Road, in the time of Charles II, is to be found in a tract published in 1675 by Thomas Mace, one of the clerks of Trinity College, Cambridge. The writer there addressed himself to the King, partly in prose and partly in verse, complaining greatly of the "wayes, which are so grossly foul and bad;" and suggesting various remedies.  He pointed out that much ground "is now spoiled and trampled down in all wide roads, where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and chuse for their best advantages; besides, such sprawling and straggling of coaches and carts utterly confound the road in all wide places, so that it is not only unpleasurable, but extreme perplexin and cumbersome both to themselves and all horse travellers."  It would thus appear that the country on either side of the road was as yet entirely unenclosed.

But Mace's principal complaint was of the "innumerable controversies, quarrellings, and disturbances" caused by the packhorse-men, in their struggles as to which convoy should pass along the cleaner parts of the road.  From what he states, it would seem that these "disturbances, daily committed by uncivil, refractory, and rude Russian-like rake-shames, in contesting for the way, too often proved mortal, and certainly were of very bad consequences to many."  He recommended a quick and prompt punishment in all such cases.  "No man," said he, "should be pestered by giving the way (sometimes) to hundreds of pack-horses, panniers, whifflers (i.e. paltry fellows), coaches, waggons, wains, carts, or whatsoever others, which continually are very grievous to weary and loaden travellers; but more especially near the city and upon a market day, when, a man having travelled a long and tedious journey, his horse well nigh spent, shall sometimes be compelled to cross out of his way twenty times in one mile's riding, by the irregularity and peevish crossness of such-like whifflers and market women; yea, although their panniers be clearly empty, they will stoutly contend for the way with weary travellers, be they never so many, or almost of what quality soever."  "Nay," said he further, "I have often known many travellers, and myself very often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a standing cart or waggon, on most beastly and unsufferable deep wet wayes, to the great endangering of our horses, and neglect of important business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most imminent danger of those deep rutts, and unreasonable ridges) till it has pleased Mister Garter to jog on, which we have taken very kindly.

There is a curious little volume in Grantham Library (and perhaps elsewhere), bound in board with a red leather spine but with no title.  Published in at the end of the 18th century, it contains five disparate pieces: Narrative Sketches of the Conquest of Mysore (India) in 1799; Warning to Britons against the French Perfidy and Cruelty, 1796; Instructions for Painting Transparancies; An Account of the Providential Preservation of Eliz.Woodcock who Survived a Confinement under the Snow of nearly Eight Days and Nights in February 1799; and, significantly, A Description of the Towns and Villages etc., on and Adjoining the Great North Road from London to Bawtry.  This section of the book is dated 1782 and is the earliest use of the name Great North Road that I have come across.  It does what the title suggests, describing villages in a short paragraph and towns such a Grantham and Stamford in a page or so.

In 1885 Robert Louis Stevenson started his book The Great North Road, but abandoned it after eight chapters in favour of Kidnapped.  It's set somewhere lonely along the road where a young woman who lives in a partly ruined castle and works in a coaching inn meets a mysterious stranger.  Just when things are hotting up the book stops.  So you'll have to make up for yourself how the hero and heroine make out.  It's nonetheless a great read if you like the richness of Stevenson's language.

During 1894, the last year of his life, Stevenson wrote St Ives, another uncompleted novel but this time he reached chapter thirty before giving up.  It is the tale of a Frenchman, adrift in England and Scotland at the time of the Napoleonic wars.  Chapter eleven, entitled The Great North Road, includes a curious account of the burial of a suicidal murderer, laid to rest with a stake through his chest in a grave in the centre of the highway.  Not a practice encouraged these days by the Highways Agency.  Elsewhere in the book there are fine accounts of life on the road, of wayside inns and posting houses, of walking with drovers and even a meeting with Sir Walter Scott himself.

Writing in 1923, Hilaire Belloc's opening paragraph of his introduction to The Road seems prescient of the present age: We are arrived at a chief turning-point in the history of the English highway.  New instruments of locomotion, a greater volume of traffic, a greater weight in loads, and vastly increased rapidity in road travel have between them brought us to an issue: either some very considerable and immediate change in the character of the Road, or a serious and increasing handicap in our rivalry with other nations through the strain and expense of an out-worn system.

More from Belloc here.

Miss Jessie Mothersole followed the Roman Road from York to Scotland in the 1920s.  Her account of the trip was published in 1927 as Agricola's Road into Scotland. Travelling alone on her bicycle, she would occasionally get a little help.  Here she is, north of Scotch Corner, hoping to make her lodgings at Piercebridge before nightfall: Picturesque old farm-houses, built of stone, with diamond-paned windows, not only in the houses, but in the great stone barns as well, lie alongside the Road.  It began to get dark, and my bicycle lamp, disused for many months, resolutely refused to burn.  There seemed nothing for it but to walk the last two miles, when a covered motor-van stopped just beyond me, and began to hang out oil lamps.  As I passed, the driver shouted, "Want a light?" And almost before I could answer he had added, "Or a lift?"  I accepted the second gratefully.  The two men took my knapsack off the bicycle, and put it in the van, saying, "We must be careful; we have a rather queer load."  While they hung the bicycle on the outside, I felt for the knapsack in the dark, and found that all the bottom of the van was a "feather-bed" – it was bedded thick with game!  There was plenty of room for me in front, and in a very short time I was safely landed on the village green at Piercebridge.  We may have gained halogen headlamps but I can't help feeling something has been lost.  This is an altogether charming read, a detailed description of Dere Street peppered with anecdotes often involving her bicycle and small children.

The following passage is by Leslie Hore-Belisha, (of Belisha-beacon fame), Minister of Transport in the 1930s and was written as a preface to R.T. Lang's The National Road Book.

Every road is a book and this is a book, or one of a series of books, about every road.  The way­farer, like the reader, can derive information, instruction and infinite pleasure from it.  Because a road is like a book it should be treated with care.  I therefore appeal to those who read these pages to use the highways they describe with consideration and courtesy.  In the old days, a traveller was in constant danger from the highwaymen.  In the present days, death and damage are dealt out in most unexpected places by citizens who have no evil intent.  In the old days the pilgrims sauntered in happy company by the inns whose signs have not altered.  There are other signs which guide us to-day and which should make us pause and consider that we still belong to a fellowship of road-users and that we should be vigilant for one another's safety.

In J. B. Priestley's Good Companions (1929) Miss Trant falls into a little reverie over historical fiction which includes our road amongst the great:  She loved to carry a secret message from Louis the Eleventh of France to Charles, Duke of Burgandy; to journey to Blois in foul weather crying vengeance on the Guises; to peep out of a haystack at Ireton's troopers; to hide in the heather after Prince Charlie had taken ship to France; to go thundering over the Rhine with Napoleon and his marshals.  To exchange passwords, to rally the Horse to the left, to clatter down the Great North Road, to hammer upon inn doors on nights of wind and sleet, these were the pleasures, strangely boyish, of her imagination.

Meanwhile, the other side of the country, Jes Oakroyd was experiencing the real thing:

Then there came a great moment. He had been dozing a little, but was roused by the lorry slowing down, sounding its horn, then swinging round into a road that was different from any they had been on so far. It was as smooth and straight as a chisel, and passing lights showed him huge double telegraph posts and a surface that seemed to slip away from them like dark water. Other cars shot past, came with a blare and a hoot and were suddenly gone, but the lorry itself was now travelling faster than he thought any lorry had a right to travel. But at one place they had to slow down a little, and then Mr. Oakroyd read the words painted in large black letters on a whitewashed wall. The Great North Road. They were actually going down the Great North Road. He could have shouted. He didn't care what happened after this. He could hear himself telling somebody - Lily it ought to be - all about it. 'Middle o' t'night,' he was saying, 'we got on to t'Great North Road.' Here was another town, and the road was cutting through it like a knife through cheese. Doncaster, it was. No trams now; everybody gone to bed, except the lucky ones going down South on the Great North Road.

The introduction to the RAC Routes to Scotland, from the 1930s, gives the following advice:

Choosing a route to the North is a matter worthy of thought. Even on a quick run there is time to absorb impressions, and a knowledge of the countryside adds interest to a tour - whether or not one pulls up for anything there may be to see.  One should not jump to the conclusion that The Western Route naturally serves Glasgow and that The Eastern Route is the one for Edinburgh.  Geographically, Edinburgh happens to lie some 40 miles west of Bristol.  London to Edinburgh by The Eastern Route (Great North Road all the way) is 399 miles. By turning off at Scotch Corner and going via Penrith, Carlisle, and Moffat, the distance is reduced to 398 ³/₄.  Mere mileage, of however much interest otherwise, is of secondary importance: the tourist wants something to see, the speed-merchant wants a fast road.

I rather like the notion that Edinburgh is 40 miles west of Bristol.

Thomas Burke, writing in 1933, described the Great North Road as "The Spine of England":

The Great North Road, though it does not run through the precise centre of England, may roughly be considered the spine England.  It is an elderly road, thicker with story and event than any other road; and, as the road by which the Scotch reach London, it has had a wide and lasting influence upon the fortunes of England.  By travelling its three hundred and forty miles (London to Berwick or vice versa), and from time to time turning off into the neighbouring country, one may see something of almost all kinds of English life and English landscape, and may touch the skirts of English history in every half hour.

I do not propose to follow it mile by mile, or to catch all its history; for that I direct you to Mr Charles Harper. In attempting to present in one volume something of the character of all parts of England I must necessarily skim where Mr Harper who has devoted two volumes to this road alone, can loiter.  I must outdo the York Highflyer and that gallant highwayman who did make the one-day ride to York-Samuel Nicks.  I must outdo, too, the cycling record-breakers of the nineties and the sports-car speed-merchants of to-day.  And I must leave great gaps.  I propose merely to use it as a line from which one may branch into the more pleasing parts of East Anglia, North-eastern England, and the Eastern Midlands, as mood or story or country suggests.

The tidy scenery of the road itself does not excite the eye – Sir Walter Scott considered it the dullest of all roads – but it is suggestive to the mind in its reflection of the English people, and just off the road you may find many a patch of delightful country. It is flat certainly, and many people find flat country tedious; but people and works of art and works of nature should be seen for themselves, and not in comparison.  Seen in this way, they almost always reveal something of interest or charm.

It must be remembered that it was always a business and political road rather than a holiday road; but what it lacks in grace is supplied by experience. It has known probably more traffic than any other English road, and much of that traffic has been of importance.  It is the old lord of English roads, and you feel its greatness when travelling on it, even if you do not know that you are on the Great North Road.  It has seen the usual procession of kings, princes, prelates, commanders, statesmen, and good plain folk, and a notably large procession of those ghostly but firmly built characters – the creations of the novelists. Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roderick Random and Strap, Squire Bramble, Lord Nigel, Frank Osbaldistone, Jeannie Deans, Hetty Sorrel, Squeers, Nicholas Nickleby, M. de St Ives – these are a few of the still travelling company that come to mind at different points of the road and at its inns.

With the coming of the railway it went into a long and sound sleep, but to-day its tarmac is in full and vigorous life, and in its southern section, so far as travel for pleasure is concerned, it is a road whose byways invite you to turn aside into rural retreat from metropolitan rush. It is no mere road: it is a section of daily life, complete with road-houses, all night palais de danse, lorry-drivers' hotels, supper-booths, wayside coffee-stalls – in short, all the modernized appointments, in tenfold measure, that were a regular part of a pilgrim’s way of the fifteenth century. The more we develop the more we go back and link ourselves to the continuity of life of which we are only an incident.

Of course it doesn't stop.  In 2008 Someone's writing a musical about the road:

Personal stories sought for A1 musical

Apr 2 2008 by Tom Mullen, Evening Chronicle

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