A1-The Great North Road

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Towards Ware

The Old North Road via Ware went through the London streets of Stoke Newington and Tottenham to Ponders End.  Here is a transcription of John Ogilby's map of the road from 1675 along with the modern street names.

These roads pretty much follow the Roman road, Ermine Street.  The route from London Bridge leads along Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate and Shoreditch High Street, to meet Old Street by Shoreditch Church, from which the route north is a straight line through Tottenham and Stoke Newington to Edmonton.  The milestones on the Ware Road were numbered from Shoreditch church.  The mail coaches starting from St. Martin's-le-Grand went along Cheapside, Moorgate, City Road and Old Street before turning into Kingsland Road.

Margary considered that the Roman Ermine Street, leading northwards from the Thames crossing, emerged from the eastern side of the original city and then, when the city walls were extended, through a gateway at Bishopsgate.  The Roman line is followed by the modern roads as far as Upper Edmonton but Fore Street and Hertford Road waver to the east.  Margary traces the Roman line from Silver Street station along Victoria Road, suggesting that the ridge along the edge of Pymms Park may represent the agger.  The line would take Ermine Street through the sports fields west of Great Cambridge Road and it is then picked up by a short stretch of the A105 to Bull's Cross, from which a minor road continues the line, taking the road into Hertfordshire.

From the City to Bruce Grove station, the road is numbered A10 but further north it becomes the A1010, the A10 turning west to run along Great Cambridge Road.  Another south-north route, Green Lanes, lies still further west and may have been an ancient alternative to Ermine Street and was certainly used by the drovers more recently.  Ermine Street kept to high ground, well above the marshes surrounding the River Lea, though, as Ogilby recorded, there were a number of east-flowing brooks and rills to cross.  There is little sign of any of these in modern London, Hackney Brook having been culverted in 1860, though the New River, an artificial stream constructed to bring fresh water to the City, winds its way along the contours of Stoke Newington.

Stoke Newington may be the place on the Old North Road with the earliest evidence of human activity.  In the 1860s a large number of Palaeolithic flint tools were found, probably about 200 000 years old, on the gravel terraces between Stamford Hill and the River Lea.  Stoke Newington was home to Daniel Defoe in the early 18th century.  As well as travelling over much of the Great North Road he campaigned for the improvement of the roads and was an early advocate of the benefits of turnpikes.  This essay was written about 1725 when he was living here.  There is now a pub called the Daniel Defoe in Stoke Newington Church Street, near where he lived.  Defoe describes the locality thus:

"Newington, Tottenham, Edmonton, and Enfield stand all in a line N. from the city; the increase of buildings is so great in them all, that they seem to a traveller to be one continued street; especially  Tottenham and Edmunton, and in them all, the new buildings so far exceed the old, especially in the value of them, and figure of the inhabitants, that the fashion of the towns is quite altered.  There is not anything more fine in their degree, than most of the buildings this way; only with this observation, that they are generally belonging to the middle sort of mankind, grown wealthy by trade, and who still taste of London; some of them live both in the city, and in the country at the same time; yet many of these are immensely rich."

Here's a newer piece, by Mike Roberts, from Stoke Newington and, from Mick Bruff, another piece about the road through Tottenham.

The Tottenham High Cross is a brick and stucco structure, built to replace an earlier wooden one in the early 17th century.  Here is an old (1805) picture and a new picture of it courtesy of Mustafa Suleman and the Ferry Lane Website.

The Old North Road and Ermine Street, running up the west side of the Lea Valley, cross an ancient landscape.  The coaxial or parallel pattern of minor roads and field boundaries have been interpreted by Tom Williamson as originating in pre-historic times. The most continuous and prominent features in the system are the tracks running at right angles to the river valley up to the high ground. He thinks this system began as a semi-regulated network of trackways for the movement of livestock, produce and timber to and from upland areas, which were themselves divided up by a sparse network of boundaries. Much of today's field pattern was created by the subsequent subdivision and infilling of this early landscape. Surveys by the county archaeologist, Stuart Bryant, have shown that the pattern survives underneath (i.e., predates) a massive area of semi-natural 'ancient' woodland that probably originated as post-Roman regeneration over abandoned land.

The road was not the only means of transport as the River Lea itself was navigable to Ware, much improved by the construction of the Lee Navigation in about 1766.  John Smeaton was the engineer responsible, as he was for the viaduct at Newark, much further north up the road.

If you're wondering about inconsistent river spelling look at this explanation.

Queen Eleanor's body was not the only royal corpse to have graced the area, for a couple of centuries earlier William the Conqueror had ceded to Harold's mother's wish to bury her son at Waltham Abbey, but, as Defoe reported in 1722, "...no monument was, as I can find, built for him, only a flat grave-stone, on which was engraven, Harold Infaelix."

Cheshunt's history was popularized a by Channel 4 Time Team dig that found a Roman pub.  Well, a building that could have been used for malting anyway.  Is this really the Great North Road's oldest pub?  The Green Dragon is much newer, dating from the 16th century.

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