A1-The Great North Road

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An introduction from the Victoria History of the Counties of England, courtesy of British History Online:

The continuations of the 12th-century routes from London, St. John Street from west Smithfield and Goswell Street from Aldersgate, joined just before entering Islington near the Angel. It is therefore likely that the Great North Road, of which Aldersgate was the start, also existed at that time, running along Upper Street into Holloway Road. Before the 14th century it was thought to have left the parish northward along Tallington or Tollington Lane (also called Devil's Lane and later Hornsey Road) to Crouch End, but by 1300 the route had become as important as Ermine Street and was so impassable that a new road was made up Highgate Hill; the bishop was claiming a toll by 1318 and inhabitants of Islington were granted pavage to repair the road up the hill in 1380.  The name Holwey was used for the district around the road by 1307.

The name Holloway is commonly assumed to refer to a road which has been worn away to form a hollow.  This part of the Great North Road seems to have been known as Holloway, give or take a bit of spelling, as early as 1307.

Archway Road was constructed in 1812-1813 in a cutting to avoid the highest part of Highgate Hill, which reaches 400 feet.  It was intended to be a tunnel but, in 1812, just before construction was complete, it collapsed.  London Clay does not have much structural integrity, so the tunnel plans were converted into a cutting and the brick Archway built to carry Hornsey Lane across the gap, the first Great North Road flyover.  But the arch wasn't very wide - single file traffic only -  and in 1897 it was demolished and replaced by a new iron archway in 1900.

In the 1820s a new road was built to link London's West End with the Great North Road.  From Swiss Cottage it is the Finchley Road, through Golders Green.  On crossing the North Circular Road it becomes Regents Park Road and then Ballards Lane until it meets the Great North Road at Tally Ho Corner, Finchley. It opened about a decade before the coming of railways ended the coaching era.

At the bottom of Highgate Hill the story of Dick Whittington is commemorated by a large stone upon which Dick rested when he heard the sounds of London bells.  Actually the stone was put there in 1821 and in 1964 was crowned by a bronze a cat.  Both stone and cat are caged within a wrought iron fence.  There's also a pub and a hospital named after him.  Dick W, not the cat.  The Whittington Stone is on the site of a much older wayside cross which may have marked the site of St Anthony's leper hospital, built in 1473 in a field on the west of the road rising up Highgate Hill.

Whetstone village centre, with several listed buildings and a Grade II listed mounting block, is a 'Local Area of Special Archaeological Significance'.  Here's an image of Warburton's 1749 map of Hertfordshire.  And on John Rocque's map of 1754 we find a Cold Harbour, just south of Whetstone, a name associated with ancient roads.

Let's look at another passage from the Victoria History:

Friern Barnet's road system was established by the late 15th century. The main north-south route of that date became known as Whetstone High Road in the north, as Friern Barnet Lane between Whetstone and Colney Hatch, and as Colney Hatch Lane from there to Muswell Hill. According to Norden, it had been the principal highway from London to Barnet and the north of England but by the early 14th century the main road ran through Hornsey park to Finchley and thence to rejoin Friern Barnet Lane at Whetstone, along the route of the modern Great North Road.  Thus only Whetstone High Road, in the extreme north-west part of the parish, was left as a major line of communication.

The implication of this is that the old route took us from the top of Holloway up what is now Highgate Hill, then along Southwood Lane, straight across the more modern Great North Road for Muswell Hill Road, Colney Hatch Lane and Friern Barnet Lane to Whetstone.  Here's a map of the road in 1783. Finchley wood originally presented a barrier to travellers and Finchley's earliest settlement was not on the line of the later Great North Road.

Northwards through Whetstone, the road is called High Road, perhaps because of its importance but perhaps alluding to its elevation along the high ground to the east of Dollis Brook, along whose banks pre-historic flint workings have been found.  Whetstone High Road was turnpiked in 1754, but by 1828 a 'Report from the Select Committee on the State of the Roads under the Whetstone and St. Alban's Turnpike Trusts' informed parliament of the bad state of the road and recommended to place the road under the care of the Parliamentary Commissioners.

The A1 follows a bypass called Barnet Way, built in the 1920s, to the west of Barnet while the old course of the Great North Road is now followed by the A1000, through Finchley, Barnet and Hadley, past the site of the Battle of Barnet in 1471, and enters the county of Hertfordshire.  An obelisk, erected in 1740, known as the Hadley Highstone, commemorates the battle. Kitts End Road forks to the north-west.  This is the old Holyhead Road, all but abandoned after Telford's new cut was opened in 1826, leaving the Great North Road further south at the start of Hadley High Street.  Telford's road, now the A1081, is here called St Albans Road.

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