A1-The Great North Road
32 miles up the Great North Road we reach Stevenage, or, since 1962, go past it on the Stevenage bypass which is now joined to the 1970 Baldock by-pass to form the A1(M). This was one of the three early motorway standard bypasses, opening in late 1961, the others being at Doncaster and at Darlington.
David Gentleman, Stevenage by-pass
David Gentleman took time out from postage stamp designing to paint this scene of motorway construction. It was published in 1964 in The Shell Book of Roads along with this passage by Geoffrey Grigson:
The new motorways of our time, sweeping on with multiple tracks, crossing over and under those old roads which just grew up from ancient paths, amount to the first system of planned communication (except for the railroads they are superseding) since the Roman occupation of Britain. Occasionally a motorway may not be an entirely new route; it may adapt part of a route first worked out by the Romans, then muddled in the intervening centuries. Here is a piece in the making of the asphalt Stevenage by-pass, A1(M), in Hertfordshire. The older narrow A1 through Stevenage followed a short stretch of Roman by-road going to Baldock, and then joined a longer Roman by-road which looped off and back to the much straighter, more important, Ermine Street. In such a modern transformation, nothing at all is left of the old Roman road which would have run along a mound forty to fifty feet wide at its widest - straight, but a handmade affair which soldiers dug out with mattock and spade.
The History of Stevenage, by Robert Trow-Smith, is an, er, history of Stevenage, first published on paper in 1958, but now with an on-line version, thanks to the Stevenage Society for Local History. Chapter One looks at ancient routes, the Icknield way and the Roman roads, while Chapter Seven, is an excellent account the roads, particularly the Great North Road, in the coaching days of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. There's a shorter history on the Borough Council's website.
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The Dunlop guide to the Great North Road shows Broadwater as a village a couple of miles south of Stevenage, then also just a village. The illustration shows SIX HILLS, GROUP OF SIX PREHISTORIC BURIAL MOUNDS IMMEDIATELY ALONGSIDE ROAD. These photos, from the Frith Collection, show the same scene in 1903 before the road was tarred and in 1955. The H-poles of the trunk telephone line are visible in all the illustrations.
Six Hills 1903
Six Hill 1955 You can buy the real high quality prints from Frith Photos
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The barrows are now squeezed into a narrow green strip between industrial units and housing estates, Stevenage, the first 'New Town' having overwhelmed the rural scene that Harper, in 1901, illustrated with this sketch and the following passage.
The entrance to Stevenage is signalised by a group of new and commonplace cottages elbowing the famous Six Hills, a series of sepulchral barrows of prehistoric date, beside the highway. These six grassy mounds might not unreasonably be passed unthinkingly by the uninstructed, or taken for grass-grown heaps of refuse. Centuries of wear and weather have had their effect, and they do not look very monumental now; but they were once remarkable enough to give the place its name, Stevenage deriving from the Saxon "stigenhaght," or "hills by the highway".
Other sources give the place name origin as deriving from the Saxon "Stithenace" or "Strong Oak" and the Six Hills may be sepulchral but they are not so very prehistoric. In fact they are the most complete surviving group of Roman burial mounds in Britain, probably from the first or second century. Nevertheless, let's continue with Harper's little tale:
To coachmen, who were adepts in the art of what the slangy call "spoofing," and were always ready - in earlier slang phrase - to "take a rise out of" strangers, the Six Hills afforded an excellent opportunity of practising a diluted form of wit, and often brought them a glass of brandy or rum-and-milk at the next pull-up, in payments of the bets they would make with the most innocent-looking passenger, that he could not tell which two of the hills were furthest apart. They are, as nearly as possible, equi-distant; but strangers would select one couple or another, according to their fancy; whereupon the coachman would triumphantly point out that the first and last were, as a matter of fact, the most widely divided. This perhaps does not exhibit coaching wit in a strikingly robust light; but a very weak kind of jocularity served to pass the weary hours of travel in our grandfathers' days.
The Roman farmstead at Chells was located in the north-east corner of what is now Stevenage new town and was excavated by HAT.
| Junction 8 on the A1(M), known as Corey's Mill after this old pub. Click the picture for its history of murder and intrigue. |
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North of Stevenage the Great North Road went through the village of Graveley and then picked up the line of the Roman road heading a little east of north. This is now the B197, with the A1(M) running to the west. This modern road, by-passing Baldock, was opened in 1970. The old road climbed the dizzy heights (433 feet) of Jack's Hill, named after a medieval character, Jack o' Legs, who tended to rob people. Read his story and plan a walk, courtesy of North Hertfordshire District Council. Jack's Hill Cafe used to be a popular transport cafe but is now perhaps more well known for the golf club. Near the A1(M)'s junction 9 the old course of the road is abandoned briefly but is then regained, now part of the A6141, as the road runs into Baldock. The road passes through a cutting in the Chalk, a major feat of early 19th century civil engineering. It was here that a Newcastle coach was held up and robbed of £500 in coins in February 1737. Taking into account a little inflation since then, this must have been one of the biggest robberies ever.
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2002, 2003
