Patrick Comerford
There is a Great Northern Road in Cambridge, close to Station Square and Station Road, and I had always thought it was part of the Great North Road that was once the main highway between England and Scotland from mediaeval times until the 20th century.
The Great North Road was link a spine that linked most of England, and it later became a coaching route used by stagecoaches and mail coaches travelling from London to York and Edinburgh. Local lore and embellished myths made it the main stomping ground of the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin.
But the Great North Road is merely a memory – albeit a cherished memory – for people today, since it was replaced by the modern A1, upgraded, realigned and brought up to motorway standards in recent decades, bypassing towns and villages that once thrived on the trade and traffic.
Still, I was reminded in Eaton Socon in Cambridgeshire last week, the route of the Great North Road can traced in many places, and some of the coaching inns and staging posts have survived here and there, reminders of the days when horses were changed and travellers stayed overnight.
Like many of the ancient Roman roads and routes that cross England – such as Watling Street (A5) from south-east to north-west, and Ryknild Street from south-west to north-east – there is evidence for the route of the Great North Road in Roman accounts and in the archaeological record of towns, forts, bridges and the road itself.
Ermine Street and Dere Street are the names later given to the Roman roads from London to York, and from York to Hadrian’s Wall near Corbridge and on towards Scotland.
But the river crossings established by the Romans were not maintained in many placed and many of the routes were neglected By the Middle Ages, long distance routes had become difficult to follow. Many monarchs, religious leaders and others travelling from London and the south to York and the north found an alternative to the Great North Road, opting for a more westerly route along Watling Street through Stony Stratford and then on through Northampton and Leicester.
In time, wooden bridges were built along the main roads, and then replaced by stone bridges, by the 14th century the standard route to York had reverted towards the Roman line of Ermine Street in the south, and via Grantham, Newark and Doncaster through Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
The road was mapped described in detail by John Ogilby in 1675. A century later, the classic coaching route along the Great North Road came into its own with the stagecoaches and post coaches in the 18th century. The turnpikes and their planned improvement to the roads opened up the route out of London though Hatfield, Stevenage and Baldock, displacing the earlier ‘Old North Road’ via Royston.
The traditional starting point for the Great North Road was Smithfield Market on the edge of the City of London. The Great North Road followed St John Street to the junction at the Angel Inn where the local road name changes from St John Street to Islington High Street.
Dick Turpin’s flight from London to York on Black Bess in less than 15 hours is the best-known legend associated with the Great North Road. Various inns along the route claim he ate there or stopped there to rest his horse. The legendary ride is now questioned by historians, but became popular through Harrison Ainsworth’s romantic novel Rookwood (1834).
Of course, the Great North Road was never the only route from London to the north. Many coaches continued to run along the Old North Road.
The Great North Road joined the Old North Road at Alconbury, an older route that followed the Roman Ermine Street. There a milestone records mileages to London along both routes: 65 by the Old North Road and 68 by the Great North Road.
In Yorkshire, the route was through Selby, York and Northallerton. Further north, the route to Edinburgh from Newcastle was by the coastal route through Berwick.
In Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, Jeanie Deans travels through several places on the Great North Road on her way to London. Charles Dickens also features the road in The Pickwick Papers.
When the General Post Office at St Martin’s-le-Grand in Aldersgate ward was built in 1829, coaches started using an alternative route, beginning at the Post Office and following Aldersgate Street and Goswell Road before joining the old route close to the Angel. In the Golden Age of Coaching, between 1815 and 1835, coaches could travel from London to York in 20 hours, and from London to Edinburgh in 45½ hours.
But just as the stagecoach routes were at their most successful in the 1830s, the arrival of the railways undermined their relevance and viability. The last coach from London to Newcastle left in 1842 and the last from Newcastle to Edinburgh in July 1847. By the second half of the 19th century, the Great North Road had become something to look back on with nostalgia.
The arrival of cars brough the roads back to life in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the great roads of the past were rediscovered. When Britain decided to follow France with a national road numbering system in 1921, the Great North Road became the A1. But in the century since, repeated improvements and realignments have seen the A1 by-pass virtually all the cities, towns and villages along the route.
Last week, when I was in Eaton Socon on the edges of St Neots in Cambridgeshire, I realised it was once a major stop on the journey from London to the North. Eaton Socon is aligned on the north-south axis, formed by the original Great North Road, where it is now designated the B1428.
Some stage coaches in the late 18th and early 19th century diverted through St Neots, but the majority continued on the Great North Road through Eaton Socon, were inns provided refreshments and overnight accommodation for travellers, and feed and rest facilities for horses.
The Great North Road is named by JB Priestley in The Good Companions, by Dorothy L Sayers in her Lord Peter Wimsey short story ‘The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag’, by Nevil Shute in Ruined City, by HG Wells in The War of the Worlds, and by George Orwell in his essay ‘England Your England’.
But, slowly – and, for many, sadly – the Great North Road of folklore is a distant memory from the past, has faded away or even has died. Many of the inns, taverns, cafés and truck stops that gave it character to the Great North Road and then the A1 are now gone.
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