Tower and Town, June 2016

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The Origins Of The Great Bath Road

The Great Road to Bath and Bristol only came to prominence late - after the Great North Road and the Dover Road. This is evidenced by the north-south alignment of the High Streets in Newbury and Hungerford; communication between the Oxford colleges and Southampton and the south coast was more important. The Bath Road only became an important highway as Bath became a fashionable place of resort in the eighteenth century.

Before that time there was of course an east-west road, principally to connect London and Bristol, but it was less a defined single route than a braid of broadly parallel ways, so the one chosen for any particular journey would depend on the time of year, the conditions and the preferences of the guides. Locally the way west from Marlborough could be in the Kennet valley where the A4 still runs, or in wet or wintery weather it could be the less muddy route over the downs (close to where Manton stables are now) and down the escarpment to Avebury. Similarly travellers from Hungerford could come through the wet muddy forest (where the A4 still runs), or along the Kennet valley through Ramsbury and Axford, or branch off to the north close to the TWU pumping station at Axford to enter Marlborough from Rabley Wood. The simplified modern route derives from which ways became turnpikes.

Once the turnpike trustees bedded in and learned by experience how to build weatherproof roads, there were a succession of road improvements. The greatest of these in the town was the construction of the New Road from the High Street London bound to the bridge over the Kennet. Hitherto traffic had wriggled down the Parade or through Oxford Street to the Green.

Alexander Kirk Wilson