The title above refers to the section of road that is now the A316 Country Way, from M3 J1 to the Hope & Anchor junction with the A305. Before it was built in its present form, it existed as the A305 Twickenham Road, a slightly less direct single carriageway road with frontage access.
Genesis as part of Great Chertsey Road
The project to upgrade this road was connected to the construction of the Great Chertsey Road (GCR). The GCR was built in the 1930s as a combination of new-build and upgrades of existing roads to create the first stage of a new arterial road leading south west from London towards Chertsey, its primary purpose being to open up new land for building and to link the districts of Richmond and Twickenham to Central London. It did so by providing a new direct line via two new bridges over the Thames. By the outbreak of the Second World War, it had reached the Hope & Anchor Pub on the A305, where its effective bypass of Twickenham ended and traffic joined the A305 Twickenham Road for its continuation west.
The intention, in the 1930s, appears to have been to continue the new arterial road west by upgrading Twickenham Road between the Hope & Anchor pub and Sunbury Cross, and then building a new road west from there towards Chertsey1. The intention for that new road west of Sunbury Cross has not yet come to light, but it would be reasonable to speculate that it would have taken a line loosely similar to the M3 in order to reach Chertsey, and would either have terminated there, or perhaps gone a short distance beyond Chertsey to reach either the A30 towards Basingstoke or the A320 for Woking.
Post-war development by Middlesex CC
Following the Second World War, investment in new road construction was minimal and the pre-war intention to extend the GCR further west does not seem to have been afforded a high priority for funding. The scheme was the responsibility of Middlesex County Council (MCC) who did not make any positive steps to pick it up again until the late 1950s.
The scheme had evidently reached the point where MCC were serious about progressing it by 1957. In January 1958, they approached the MOT to request a loan of £600,000 plus a grant of £450,000 to build an extension to the GCR from the Hope & Anchor to Sunbury Cross. The application suggests this new road would have a 120ft cross section, with two 24ft carriageways (therefore two lanes each way). Space would be provided in the central reservation for later widening to 36ft carriageways, adding a third lane. The project would terminate the GCR at Sunbury until it could be extended further2.
The description of the route that appears at this point is very much one that resembles a pre-war Arterial Road scheme, and perhaps indicates that designs drawn up prior to 1939 had been dusted off without making any major revisions.
The response to the application for funding is not on file, but evidently some progress was made, because properties on Twickenham Road that were in the way of the widening works were compulsory purchased over the next couple of years3.
Disgareement over Sunbury Cross junction
In the early 1960s, plans for this corridor were changing rapidly. Planning within the MOT for the national motorway network led to the GCR’s corridor west of Sunbury being adopted for a motorway towards Basingstoke and the South West, later to become the M3. This had the effect of replacing any existing plan for the GCR to progress any further west, taking the project out of MCC’s hands; and making MCC’s plans for Hope & Anchor to Sunbury Cross increasingly outdated as traffic forecasts escalated.
Interestingly, though, MCC appeared to be ahead of the MOT on the requirements that would be placed on Sunbury Cross when the new motorway arrived, and initially faced some push back on their proposals for the junction. Having initially designed a large roundabout for the original GCR scheme, they continued to be bound by an earlier policy decision that the junction would not be grade separated.
In a letter dated 4 March 1960 from H.S. Andrew, County Engineer and Surveyor at MCC, to the Divisional Road Engineer for Metropolitan Roads at the MOT, Andrew states that Sunbury Cross had been suggested for a flyover but the MOT had ruled this out in 1947. The MOT’s argument was that a roundabout would handle all anticipated traffic. The point of the letter is to stress that a flat roundabout must be “well designed” to cater for all seven converging roads at this location, and that a signal installation would not suffice. Other nearby papers suggest that signals were a serious consideration and were being viewed favourably by some people at the MOT4.
By 1960, the picture was beginning to change, and the word “motorway” was starting to appear on traffic forecasts for Sunbury Cross, and thoughts at the MOT appeared to be shifting. One letter, sent from one branch of the Ministry to another, illustrates the change of heart:
…without a plan it is most difficult to visualise either a roundabout or signals being satisfactory, particularly with a motorway entering the junction.
Letter dated 8 July 1960, from A. Smith, Highways Engineering Classified Roads & General Branch, MOT, to the Divisional Road Engineer for Metropolitan Roads5
By July 1961, the design of both the Sunbury Cross junction and the whole Hope & Anchor to Sunbury project had been amended. The intention was to provide an ultimate standard of D3 throughout, flyovers at all junctions including Sunbury Cross, and pedestrian segregation. However, this would be a final configuration and the road would initially be built to a more modest initial cross-section.
Interim layouts for junctions
In a further letter from H.S. Andrew to the DRE, sent on 18 April 1962, he describes the proposals as providing a D2 underpass at the Hope & Anchor junction, but initially it would be built without the underpass, and with the sliproads three lanes wide, until such time as the the underpass was built, at which point the sliproads would revert to two-lane. At the Brown Bear junction, a D2 flyover would eventually be provided, but again it would be built at the outset with D3 slips meeting the roundabout6.
There is a mention, in December 1962, that the total cost of the scheme was now £1,730,000. At no stage in the foregoing was there ever any suggestion that the M3 would continue any further east than Sunbury. There is a very strong sense that the MOT took over the GCR line west of Sunbury, but since proposals were in hand for the GCR east of there, they had no interest in progressing the motorway any distance further.
References
- Middlesex CC: Great Chertsey Road extension (A305) dualling between Hope and Anchor Public House and Sunbury Cross; held at MT 106/127 ↩︎
- ibid. ↩︎
- Many of the Compulsory Purchase orders and associated paperwork and plans have been kept in exhaustive detail at MT 106/130 ↩︎
- See 1. ↩︎
- See 1. ↩︎
- See 1. ↩︎