A1-The Great North Road
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Two miles north of Stretton, the South Witham Verges Nature Reserve surrounds a road which occupies what was once a railway cutting. The line from Bourne to Leicester closed to passengers in 1959 and freight use ended in 1965. When the A1 was made a dual carriageway in 1970, the South Witham - Castle Bytham road was diverted into the old railway cutting with slip roads created to produce a safer junction. The old road bridge over the railway was retained and a new one built alongside to carry the new carriageway. A rich limestone flora on the grassland and scrub on the old railway cutting's bank provide habitat for many birds. The Fox is just north of where it says 'A1' on the map. Access in now from the southbound carriageway only. The Blue Bull is an inn no more. It stood at the 'S' of Stamford. The Blue Cow is just off to the left of the map. |
This is one of the highest stretches of the Great North Road south of Berwick, running for several miles at around 120 metres or 400 feet above sea level. Only Ganwick Corner near Barnet and Ferryhill and Sheriff Hill, Gateshead are higher.
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The Fox was originally three separate cottages but became a coaching inn in the 18th century. It was shut down in 1996 for the road widening of the A1and left to deteriorate while the road plans changed. It reopened in July 2000, looking a lot more black and white. Further north on Witham Corner, the White Horse Inn has long since been demolished. |
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The Blue Cow Inn at South Witham has its own micro-brewery. It claims to date from the 13th century and also claims to be a tidy 100 miles from both London and York. There's a very blue sign of a cow hanging in Grantham Museum It offers a free drink to those who follow this link! |
South Witham is also home to the Geeson Brothers Motorcycle Museum, a private collection of over 80 British motorcycles dating from 1913. Its founder used to run a petrol station on the Great North Road near the Fox.
Just north of South Witham, in a field now known as Temple Hill, is the site of a Preceptory of the Knights Templar. Unfortunately there is nothing there to be seen there so take the virtual tour courtesy of the South Witham Archaeological Group.
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The Great North Road left the Roman line, and the present A1, about a mile south of the modern Colsterworth roundabout. It is now a minor road, the B6403, and only accessible from the northbound carriageway of the A1. It is un-signposted, has no slip road and is easily missed at the speed that traffic uses this stretch of the A1. Drive on to the roundabout and turn left for Colsterworth to find it. The old road now forms the quiet main street of Colsterworth, rejoining the A1 down the hill, just past the bridge of the old railway line. The extract from Dunlop's On The Road records the straightening of the A1, returning it to the line of the Roman Ermine Street.
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A road off to the east of the A1, leading to an industrial estate, is charmingly named "Honey Pot Lane". Here is Garfoot-Gardner's account of the name's origin: A lane on the right leads to prolific cowslip pastures. In the plenteous days of cane sugar and home made wine, crowds of Rutland folk came here, frequently on foot over lengthy miles, to gather quantities of these yellow blooms. Local farmers bemoaned the fact that quantities of cowslips only appear on poor soil.
However, Adrian Room gives another meaning for Honeypot Lane, along with Pudding Lane and Porridge Pot Alley. He thinks they refer to the muddy and miry nature of the road. Honey may be sweet but it is also sticky.
| Colsterworth's great claim to fame is being next to the hamlet of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth at whose Manor House, now owned by the National Trust, Isaac Newton was born on 25th of December 1642. Here are some old pictures of Woolsthorpe. |
Painting of Woolsthorpe Manor House by J.C.Barrow in 1799. Its changed a bit in the intervening two centuries. The dormer windows have gone as has the outbuilding to the right. The mud has become a lawn. The original painting is in Grantham Museum. |
A Late Iron-Age farmstead at Colsterworth, excavated in the 1940s, comprises a small group of five or six round huts with a central hut somewhat larger than the others, lying within an irregular enclosure of around half a hectare with a surrounding bank and ditch. The ditch was about 6 metres wide and 2.5 metres deep, enclosing a roughly elliptical area measuring 80 by 100 metres. This steading was occupied around the middle of the first century AD, probably by a single family group. The Romans seem to have quarried ironstone and smelted iron here.
Possibly the oldest milestone in this area is at Colsterworth; it is very worn and in known locally as a Roman milestone although its actual origins are uncertain.
Woolsthorpe Line Nature Reserve is a 3 km length of disused railway line mostly to the west of Colsterworth, but accessible at its eastern end from the embankment on the A1 slip-road. The railway's disused bridge still spans the A1 half a mile north of the Colsterworth roundabout. The railway once served the ironstone quarries which, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching a peak in the 1930s, were a prominent feature of much of the landscape to the west of the Great North Road in this area.
©Biff Vernon 2002, 2005
