A1-The Great North Road

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Sewstern Drift

This picture by David Gentleman, better known for his postage stamp designs, appeared on a Shell poster in 1964, one of the 'Explore the roads of Britain with Shell' series from the days when the oil company was trying to associate its corporate image with the beauties of the countryside.  It was then published as a book with text by the poet, Geoffrey Grigson.  

Sewstern Lane may be the oldest, probably pre-Roman, route between the Stamford and Newark regions.  It lies west of the A1, by-passing Grantham by about five miles.  The Roman Ermine Street followed this ancient route northwest out of Stamford for six miles but then turned north for Lincoln. Remains of Roman settlements lie close to Lane near Thistleton and near Denton suggesting its use during Roman times. The exact route may have been ill defined at first but the enclosure of farmland fixed its path between widely spaced boundaries leaving a broad green lane.  Today the route is followed in part by tarmac roads and in part by a broad but unmade track whose appearance may not have changed too much over time.  Near Sproxton the line was interrupted by an airfield.

It is often known as Sewstern Drift as in recent centuries it was principally a drove road, used for the movement of cattle and sheep when four legs rather than refrigerated lorries brought meat to market.  London was fed by such movements and must have reached a peak in the 10th century before the railways took the trade.  As the folk song has it:

Oh the Droving Days are Done

And the Drovers’ Way is Run

For there’s Railways Laid

And they’ve taken the Trade

And the Droving days are Done.               anon.

Sewstern Drift just misses all the villages between Great Casterton, outside Stamford, to Long Bennington, just south of Newark.  It was best not to drive too many animals through village centres and anyway the tolls on the turnpike route could be avoided.

The Lincolnshire-Rutland boundary follows the Lane for several miles.  Rutland’s borders were defined in Saxon times and may have developed from pre-Roman tribal boundaries.  There is an old tradition, though no real evidence, that the Sewstern Lane boundary was marked by wooden carvings known as Queen Trees, from which an inn called The Three Queens got its name.  There is nothing left of this inn but it stood in the east quadrant of the crossroads where the Salter’s Way crossed Sewstern Lane at SK860297.  Salter’s Way is another ancient trackway, linking Leicester to the coast, here forming a minor road from Croxten Kerriel to Spittlegate, south of Grantham.  Called Gorse Lane, it crosses over the A1 on a bridge and runs along the high flat top of the Jurassic Limestone.  The Three Queens site is now a small wood and Sewstern Lane is here just a footpath, part of the Viking Way and the E2.  It is a strangely wet place.  A road sign warns of the possibility of flooding and in wet weather a stream trickles across the road.  The site lies within the outcrop of the Mid-Jurassic Inferior Oolitic Limestone and it is perhaps surprising to find water flowing on the relatively high ground of this limestone plateau.  We are, however, close to the base of the Limestone and the underlying Esturine Beds have layers of clays and there are also patches of Boulder Clay hereabouts which may account for the impervious surface.  The Three Queens existed through the 19th century and has been described as a coaching inn but it probably accommodated more cattle drovers than coach parties.  It was the turnpike through Grantham that kept such traffic though some coaches may have passed this way when conditions were not too muddy.  Crop marks of an iron age barrow burial lie a few hundred yards to the south of the Three Queens crossroads, indicating the importance of this area for the pre-Roman tribes.  A footpath used to lead eastwards from The Three Queens towards Wyville, indicating the importance of the pub for the locals. 

A mile to the south are more iron age barrows, here still forming bumps in the ground and King Lud’s Entrenchment, which may be an Saxon earthwork.  The area, together with part of the Drift, is an SSSI, important for its unimproved limestone grassland, though the site’s (lack of) management has been the subject of criticism by Friends of the Earth.  They report, “One of the biggest problems in dealing with the management of The Drift is that the site apparently belongs to no-one.” Friends of the Earth Report Cold Comfort Farming: A Fair Deal for Farmers and Wildlife.  The ambiguous land ownership reflect the character of the drove road.

Further north the route is not too clear.  There is a steep slope north of Woolsthorpe avoided by the present day track as it descends to cross the Grantham Canal by the Longmoor Bridge.  Since the canal was built well before the droving trade declined this bridge may have felt the traffic of tens of thousands of cattle each year.

Sewstern Lane crosses the Canal by bridge No. 62, The Longmoor Bridge.

This track continues as Longmoor Lane through the villages of Sedgebrook and Allington to meet the A1 at Foston.  It is likely that the drove road took a more westerly route, lost at first in the canal and neighbouring railway track before being visible again as a track leading straight north to rejoin the A1 just south of Long Bennington avoiding other villages before reaching the Trent at Newark.  There is actually a road sign saying Sewstern Lane where it meets a slip road to the A1.  The lane heads south, stretching dead straight for miles to the horizon, defying the dead end road sign at its beginning.  The river Trent may have been wider, shallower and wadeable once so the ancient route may have headed north-west to Worksop and then north long before Romans thought of bridges.

Sewstern Drift may have been pre-Roman but there was a substantial Roman population in this area with evidence such as a temple at Thistleton, potteries at Market Overton and a villa at Denton, so Roman feet must have trod this way.  In any case the Drift led towards the Roman Trent crossing of Ad Ponton at or near to Newark.

There is more about the old Drove Roads at the pages about The Bullock Road and Hambleton Drove.

Jurassic Way

Another ancient way (though not exactly Jurassic and sometimes called Middle Street) pre-empted Ermine Street.  It follows the crest of the Jurassic Limestone escarpment for fifty files south from the Humber, through Lincoln to Grantham running a little west of Ermine Street and not nearly as straight.  The modern roads, the B1398 north of Lincoln and the A607 south of Lincoln, trace its route.  There is no tangible proof of its existence in the form of road metalling, timber track or worn surfaces but it was certainly in use in medieval times.  Like Sewstern Drift, it misses most of the medieval and Anglo-Saxon villages but probably for a different reason.  The old route keeps to the dry high ground while the villages nestle at the scarp foot on the spring line with short link roads.  South west of Grantham the route of the path is less obvious but may have headed for Leicester keeping to the high ground north of Melton Mowbray.  There is a modern long-distance footpath called the Jurassic way, stretching from Stamford to Oxfordshire.

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©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002