The route of the North Orbital Road between Egham and Denham was the subject of intense study during the 1960s, since the alignment inherited from the MOT’s pre-war Arterial Road Programme was difficult to adapt to motorway standards. Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) led the design work for most of the 1960s, until in 1969 the MOT appointed a firm of consultants to take over.
Original alignment
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Landscape Advisory Committee advice, 1973-74
By the early 1970s, the route from Egham to Stanwell Moor was fixed, as was the site of Denham Interchange, but in between those points there were still numerous options and there was difficulty in reducing them to a manageable number. Remarkably, the original alignment through Iver Heath was still in the running, though evidently not a preferred option.
In 1973, in an attempt to sift the available options down, the Ministry’s Landscape Advisory Committee was summoned to carry out site visits and offer their advice1.
Details of their first outing to Buckinghamshire are recorded in remarkable detail. On 6 March 1973 they travelled out from the Ministry’s offices to Denham by train, and then were picked up for a coach tour of the local area, stopping to observe the places that the various possible routes would affect. The record notes that:
- They were given a tour of Denham by Silverline Tours; the coach hire cost £22.
- There was a buffet luncheon at 13.00 in the Oxford Room at The Bull Hotel, Gerard’s Cross, where the driver was invited to join the rest of the party for lunch. The room hire cost £4.32, and 17 people were served lunch at £1.25 each (totalling £21.25).
- The party were returned to Denham station by 15.55. The rail timetable for the outing is also held on record as a photocopy.
The Committee returned in February 1974 for a second visit, lunch included, though the details on record for that visit are less exhaustive.
The remainder of the available information is a collection of drafts and versions of Landscape Committee reports discussing the line of the NOR (now occasionally referred to as M25), which hint at the options being considered. However, there are no plans of these route options, so they can only be surmised from written descriptions.
The Landscape Advisory Committee described several possible routes between Egham and the M4, and several further routes between the M4 and Denham, and appear to have considered them as two separate halves. The numbering of the routes suggest that they were looking at the surviving possibilities from a larger set, some of which had presumably already been discarded.
Egham to M4
- Route I cut through Colnbrook in narrow gap that had been reserved in the County Development Plan, which suggests that this was the 1930s preferred route. It would have met the M4 near J5.
- Route IIa “swings out into Staines Moor to the line of the River Colne”, following gravel workings and then turning north west, passing near a line of factories. Again, it would have met the M4 near J5.
- Route III would follow gravel workings along the Colne Valley. It met the M4 at railway crossing, which strongly suggests the site of the present M4/M25 junction, and that this is, therefore, the route eventually selected.
M4 to Denham
- Route I would pass through Richings Park, and then follow the County Development Plan line through Iver Heath, with development of houses and a school right up to the boundary. This was the NOR’s 1930s route, complete with the sharp corner at Iver Heath. The Committee made it clear that it was not an appropriate line for a motorway.
- Route IIa would follow the same course through Richings Park, but would then avoid Iver Heath by crossing Bangors Park.
- Route III would run immediately to the west of Iver water treatment works, then close to the village of Iver, requiring diversion of the River Colne. It would then cross the edge of Huntsmoor Park and cut through Woodlands park.
The committee recommended Route III throughout, with some modifications to take it a little further away from the village of Iver. This appears to be approximately the route eventually built as the M25 between J13 and J16, so the Committee’s advice appears to have been useful in resolving the debate about the NOR’s alignment2.