This route was first proposed as a motorway in [YEAR]. By the late 1960s, a line for a series of connected bypasses along the line of the A41 between Watford and Tring existed in the Hertfordshire County Development Plan, but the fact that it was now being worked up into a motorway was still under wraps.

• Extension beyond Tring
• Traffic forecasts
• Deferral related to Roskill Commission
• Local unhappiness about the project
  • King’s Langley Bypass Campaign
• Administrative difficulties, 1971
  • Objection to detrunking orders
  • Deviation from Development Plan route
• To do
• References

Extension beyond Tring

The motorway was originally envisaged (and promoted in legal orders) as the A41(M) Watford-Tring Motorway, and there are contemporary maps that refer to it by the same name. However, extensions at both ends were evidently at least considered.

Northwards, from the end of the Tring Bypass, there were hints of a continuation at least as far as Aylesbury. In 1969, the Eastern Road Construction Unit (ERCU) noted that Bucks CC were considering it.

“The continuation of the scheme into Buckinghamshire is much less advanced but the County Council has been considering plans for a by-pass to Aston Clinton and Aylesbury. Investigations indicate that the major traffic movement (about 2 to 1) is A.41 from the south-east to A.418 to Thame and Oxford rather than to A.41 Bicester. This suggests that an Aylesbury by-pass should be located to the south of the town; preliminary thoughts at Aston Clinton also appear to favour a southerly by-pass and thus a northerly by-pass of Tring no longer has the same support from Buckinghamshire County Council that it had in 1949.”

Undated minute, circa 1969¹

Traffic forecasts

Expected traffic volumes, 1990, forecast in 1971 by the DOE’s General Planning Highways Division²:

Section	1990 pcus/day
Tring By-pass	24,000
Tring Park Interchange – Kingshill	35,000
Kingshill Interchange – Bourne End	55,000
Bourne End – Hemel Hempstead	63,000
Hemel Hempstead – Hunton Bridge	48,000

The above figures were used to justify a D3M cross section between Hunton Bridge and Berkhamsted, and D2M from Berkhamsted to Tring, though there was not yet any decision in 1971 as to whether it would initially be built as D2M between Hunton Bridge and Berkhamsted with space for widening.

However, there’s less uncertainty on the project plans. D2M with a wide central reserve for later widening is how the plans show it, and they are also dated to 1971³.

Deferral related to Roskill Commission

While the A41(M) project was going to be made public in May 1971, the date was deferred. Happening in parallel was the Roskill Commission, a panel of experts convened to investigate options for the construction of a Third London Airport and recommend a site for the airport to the Government⁴.

However, in December 1970, the Roskill Commission made its long-awaited recommendation, which was for Cublington Airport, a site about seven miles from Tring. The next step was for the Government to consider this recommendation, and then either approve or refuse it, but until they did no part of the Government could be seen to show any favour to the idea.

That meant that the A41(M) was held back without warning, for fear that the announcement of a motorway to Tring would look like a motorway to Cublington was being built on the sly. After some deliberation, Roskill’s recommendation was rejected, and Maplin Sands was selected instead, which in turn gave us the M12 and M13 plans.

In a letter dated 30 December 1970, the Minister of Local Government and Development wrote:

“I think it is essential to postpone publication of a line for this motorway until a decision is made on the Third London Airport. The motorway seems to be to be fully justified without airport traffic, and anyway I have always personally envisaged Cublington traffic entering the M1 at Dunstable by some new east/west road, but the Press will almost certainly publicise it as indicating Government preference for Cublington. With luck, we might be able to get the Third London Airport decision before Whitsun [30/5/71] and, surely, a word to the local MPs about our reason for delaying progress with the A41 should keep them quiet.”

Minute from Minister of Local Government and Development, 30 December 1970⁵

Local unhappiness about the project

The unveiling of the A41(M) in 1971 intensified feelings in the local area, and many people were against the new road. It was a successor to existing plans for a series of individual bypasses of towns along the A41, most of which already divided opinion between people who wanted their local town centre to be relieved of traffic and people who didn’t want the pleasant countryside to be despoiled for a new road.

There’s evidence that, in 1968, local campaigners pushing for a bypass of King’s Langley were unhappy about being fobbed off again and again, on the basis that the MOT could not give them early indications about the bypass. Instead they kept being told that they would have to wait for the line of the road to be published, which of course didn’t happen until late 1971.

King’s Langley Bypass Campaign

Members of the “King’s Langley Bypass Campaign” had met the MOT on 12 December 1968, when they were told the Ministry “hoped to publish the Draft Order by June 1969”, after which legal processes would take at least two years. Following that meeting, an “agreed joint statement” was issued by the MOT and the Campaign.

On 16 July 1970, Michael Heseltine (then a junior Minister) told the Hempstead Evening Echo that a further few months’ delay would happen before the Draft Orders could be published.

A letter is on file dated 25 August 1970, from the Campaign to the MOT, expressing dissatisfaction that the publication of the line of the road had not yet happened, despite promises that it would be⁶.

The Campaign then contacted ERCU to inform them – with some considerable irritation – that rumours were circulating locally that were damaging to the project. This list is only a partial summary of the rumours they listed:

• That the delays are so that the public will be presented with a fait accompli instead of a consultation, and that locals will have no input into the bypass;
• That the idea a consultation took place was a fiction;
• That the delay is being staged to allow Roskill to be taken into consideration – this one was, of course, later half true;
• That a local resident living on the line of the road and in correspondence with the MOT has been told on an official basis that the project is not yet funded;
• That the road will run along certain lines here or there – this sounds like another case of planning blight;
• That the whole project is at risk due to change of Government or a change of policy regarding national motorway plans.

Administrative difficulties, 1971

In Jan 1971, planners were concerned that amendments would be required in light of Roskill, meaning changes to what was thought to be a finished scheme. Little seems to have come of this⁷.

However, there were much more serious discussions about amending the published line of the road to depart from the line shown in the County Development Plan between Berkhamsted and Tring. This part had been subject to an inquiry already, as part of its inclusion in the CDP, but the intention now was to move it further from the built up area and make it cheaper to build.

There were, by 1972, two sources of controversy that the DOE were battling.

Objection to detrunking orders

Hertfordshire County Council made a formal objection to the Detrunking Orders associated with the A41(M) project, and based the available files this was a fairly run of the mill dispute to do with the old A41 being brought up to a standard they thought was suitable before it was handed over to them. They were set to carry that objection to a “Special Parliamentary Process”.

However, the legal orders for the A41(M) project were a real jumble, with the Detrunking Orders being published in parallel with the Trunk Road Orders, and with some of the orders for construction and trunking of side roads and slip roads included in the Detrunking Order for some reason.

Normal practice would be to publish a set of Trunk and Side Road Orders to get the road built, and do Detrunking later when the road was open. The jumble here meant that, when Herts CC objected and triggered the Special Parliamentary Process, they would not just be dragging the detrunking issues to a Parliamentary Committee, at which any other party could also bring objections (including anti-road campaigners and disgruntled locals who had already had their say once at the public inquiry and whose objections were supposedly put to bed) – they would be taking the whole A41(M) scheme to Parliamentary Committee since the whole scheme was bound up with the detrunking.

This was a problem that had caused issues on two more minor schemes elsewhere (exactly which ones are not recorded), but evidently the DOE was struggling with best practice when it came to legal orders for road construction in this period.

Deviation from Development Plan route

A small section of the route of the Berkhamsted Bypass, lying between Northchurch and Tring, was contested by locals, being a deviation from the existing and approved Development Plan route, and this dispute had not been satisfactorily dealt with.

The DOE attempted to resolve the matter by publishing orders for the rest of the A41(M), and then submitting that one section for re-examination. Divorcing one length of road from the rest in this manner, when the rest of the scheme could never be built without it, was a new power the MOT/DOE had gained in a 1971 Parliamentary Act, and one they were keen to use here to keep the A41(M) project moving along. Supposedly it could only be used if the sections for which orders were being published would not prejudice a decision on the rest, but it’s hard to see how orders could be published for a road without knowing where the middle bit would go.

The paper trail is patchy on these issues and there appears to be no resolution to either on the official record to either; it’s entirely possible given the dates of both that they were overtaken by events before either was resolved.

To do

• Inspector’s report
• Hunton Bridge junction
• Alignment and design
• Tring Park controversy:

“Landscape Advisory Committee: The Committee inspected the route in 1968 and in their report accept the alignment through Tring Park in the knowledge that the line had been selected so that the formal avenue and the clumps of trees could be preserved to the greatest possible effect.” Contrast this with the picture of the avenue ending at a spiral concrete footbridge.

Undated minute, circa 1969⁸

References

1. Document 1 at MT 127/21 ↩︎
2. “Tring (Herts) to Berkhamsted (Herts) Bypass proposals: correspondence with Chiltern Society; controversial scheme; matters of policy concerning use of detrunking orders” at MT 127/21 ↩︎
3. Watford – Tring Motorway A41(M) – Plans, held at CNT/HH/3/5/RD33(a) ↩︎
4. Document 8 at MT 127/21 ↩︎
5. Document 14 at MT 127/21 ↩︎
6. Document 20b at MT 127/21 ↩︎
7. Document 52 at MT 127/21 ↩︎
8. See 2. ↩︎