A1-The Great North Road
Geology.—The rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the shallow syncline known as the London basin, the beds dipping in a southeasterly direction. The two most important formations are the Chalk, which forms the high ground in the north and west; and’ the Eocene Reading beds and London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part of the county. On the northern boundary, at the foot of the chalk hills, a small strip of Gault Clay and the Upper Greensand above it falls just within the county. The lowest subdivision of the chalk is the Chalk Marl, which with the Totternhoe Stone above it, lies at the base of the Chalk escarpment, by Ashwell, Pirton and Miswell to Tring. Above these beds, the Lower Chalk, without flints, rises up sharply to form the downs which are the easterly continuation of the Chiltern Hills. Next comes the Chalk Rock, which being a hard bed, lies near the hilltops by Boxmoor, Apsley End and near Baldock. The Upper Chalk slopes southward towards the Eocene boundary previously mentioned. The Reading beds consist of mottled and yellow clays and sands, the latter are frequently hardened into masses made up of pebbles in a siliceous cement, is known locally as Hertfordshire puddingstone. The London Clay, a stiff blue clay which weathers brown, rests nearly everywhere upon the Reading beds. Outliers of Eocene rocks rest on the chalk at Micklefield Green, Sarrat, Bedmond, &c. The Chalk is often covered by the Clay-with-flints, a detrital deposit, formed of the remnants of Tertiary rocks and Chalk. Glacial gravels, clays and barns cover a great deal of the whole area, and the Upper Chalk itself has been disturbed at Reed and Barley by the same agency.; Chalk’ was formerly used’ for building purposes; it is now burned for lime. Reading beds and London clay are dug for brick-making at Watford, Hertford and Hatfield. Phosphatic nodules have been excavated from the base of the Chalk Marl at several places along the outcrop; the Marl is’ worked for cement.
The Great North Road branches from the Holyhead Road at Barnet, and passes Potter’s Bar, Hatfield, Stevenage and Baldock, with a branch from Welwyn to Hitchin and beyond. Another road follows the Lea valley to Ware, whence it runs to Royston, being here coincident with the Roman Ermine Street and known as the Old North Road. From The Encyclopedia Brittanica 1911.
A particularly good account of Hertfordshire's topography is A Landscape Strategy for Hertfordshire, produced by the County Council in 1997 and published on-line in 2001.
Jackman quotes from a journal (British Museum 10348 ccc. 56, North of England and Scotland: Edinburgh 1818) by an anonymous writer who travelled the Great North Road in the winter of 1704: I sett out from Royston, and with a great deal of toyle, travelling about two miles an hour at most, thro' the worst and deepest ways I ever rode, and (I believe) is in England. I gott nine miles to Caxton - but passed on about 4 miles further, in a road but little better, to Godmanchester.
Johnson suggests that it was the beer that made the roads: It may be said that the malting industry of Ware was in a sense responsible for the creation or that (turnpike) system. By the mid-seventeenth century, when travelling was steadily becoming more common, Ermine Street south of Huntingdonshire, neglected for centuries, had become so decayed as to be virtually unusable by reason of the heavily laden wagons and long trains of pack-horses bringing barley to Ware malsters from all over the eastern counties. So loud grew the outcry that in 1663 Parliament broke through the ancient policy of leaving road maintenance to parish supervision by passing an Act putting a long section of Ermine Street into the hands of the justices of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, with power to defray the cost of maintenance by tolls on road users. Three turnpike gates were authorized; actually the only one to function was at Wadesmill. The road continued under the jurisdiction of the justices until 1733, when its Hertfordshire section, from Wadesmill to Royston, was taken over by a Wadesmill Turnpike Trust composed at first of local gentry, parsons and influential farmers. South of Wadesmill the Cheshunt Turnpike Trust had been created in 1725.
Wadesmill was on the Old North Road. The piecemeal approach to road improvement associated with the turnpikes is illustrated by Johnson's account of development on the Great North Road. A trust was established along it from Highgate, Middlesex, to Barnet in 1712, and extended to an inn (the predecessor of the present-day Duke of York) south of Potters Bar in 1720. In that year a trust was created to control the section north of Stevenage through Baldock to Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. Then in 1726 the road from Lemsford Mill, Hatfield, to Stevenage came under the control of another trust, and - at last - in 1730 the section from the Duke of York to Lemsford Mill was turnpiked. Not until 1730, therefore could a traveller along the Great North Road through Hertfordshire begin to expect to find a road which might be kept in something like reasonable repair throughout the whole length of the county.
McAdam lived in Hertfordshire, at Hoddesdon, between 1825 and 1836. He was employed as surveyor to several Hertfordshire turnpike trusts.
The North Road Cycling Club was founded in 1885 to promote fast and long distance riding on the Great North Road. The NNCC is still going strong, based in Hertfordshire. Further up the road in Bedfordshire is the memorial to F T Bidlake.
At Welwyn (TL 2315). with an entrance from the middle roundabout on the Welwyn bypass is a suite of Roman baths of a third-century villa complex preserved in a steel vault under the embankment of the A1(M).
Here are some milestones and milepost that are Listed Buildings in the Welwyn area:
Milestone about 30m north of Little Heath Farm, Great North Road, Little Heath
Milepost, Church Street, Welwyn
Milestone on pavement abutting front wall near northern end of range at Guessens,
Milepost just north of Fulling Mill Lane, Codicote Road, Welwyn
Milepost, Great North Road, Oaklands, Welwyn
Milepost, London Road, Woolmer Green
Milepost to West of Comet Roundabout, Hatfield Road, Hatfield
And here, according to Johnson, recorded in 1970, are those on the Old North Road, now the A10, from the Wadesmill Trust:
TL 359117 Wadesmill, N of village
TL 366192 High Cross, N of village
TL 377222 Standon, opposite Ct Edmund's College grounds
TL 358234 Puckeridge, High Street
TL 377278 Puckeridge, Hamels Park
TL 371278 Puckeridge, N of Hamels Park
TL 364292 Buntingford, S end of town
TL 363293 Buntingford, outside St Peter's Church
TL 356308 Buntingford, opposite Corneybury
TL 355324 Chipping, N of village
TL 356356 Reed, N of Reed turn
TL 358372 Reed
TL 358388 Reed, N of windmill
TL 357404 Royston, S end
And on the Great North Road (B197) for the Welwyn Trust:
TL 222135 Welwyn Garden City, opposite Brockswood Lane
TL 222149 Welwyn, Digswell Hill
TL 232162 Welwyn, Church Street
TL 245175 Welwyn, Oaklands
TL 253186 Woolmer Green
TL 250202 Knebworth cross roads
TL 247219 Knebworth, S of Broadwater
And further along the Great North Road (B197) for the Stevenage-Biggleswade Trust:
TL 245323 Baldock, near George IV public house
TL 240307 Letchworth, near Letchworth Gate
TL 234293 Letchworth, S of Jack's Hill
TL 231227 Graveley, S end of village
TL 232261 Stevenage, near Rectory Lane
Hatfield tunnel opened last weekend of October 1986.
B & B Lincolnshire B&B
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003