The Great North Road

The Great North Road runs from London to Edinburgh, passing close to my house and the Nature Reserve where I work. It is both a blessing and a curse, as it has always been for people in these parts. It provides a way to travel north and south while, at the same time, it seems to mark a boundary from east to west.

Most of the old route has been replaced by Britain's primary trunk road, called the A1. If you are in a hurry to get "up north" or "down south" the A1 Motorway will be your route, but the motorway bit of the A1 starts from my village and heads north, and there isn't really an obstruction in your way until the next roundabout, somewhere in Scotland, maybe 200 miles away. Heading south is another matter with a series of notorious roundabouts at Brampton Hut, Buckden and the Black Cat that usually make the morning's traffic news. The old road used to join the villages together whereas the new one divides them. Towns and villages have become obstacles to traffic rather than destinations in their own right.There are still lethal crossings where drivers have to cross both carriageways to exit their village and there are a few public footpaths that cross this busy stretch of road too.

The road through Stamford has hardly changed in 100 years.

So, who designed the Great North Road in the first place? The Romans, that's who.

The Roman road was called Ermine Street. It's function was to get troops on foot from south to north by the quickest route, which was, generally, a straight line. The problem was terrain, and the biggest obstacles were rivers. They could take compass bearings from London to York, but they had to divert to find river crossings. This meant that Ermine Street had to cross the Great Ouse, the Nene, the Trent, the Humber and the Yorkshire Ouse at the best crossing point, wherever that was.

In my neck of the woods, the Romans chose a route that stayed to the east of the Great Ouse until they reached Godmanchester. Ermine Street crossed the river and followed a route that became Huntingdon High Street, which is, once more, a pedestrian thoroughfare. They continued north towards what is now Peterborough, to the east of the new road, crossing the River Nene at Stamford.

The Great North Road followed Ermine street up to a point, but it had a different agenda. It connected towns along the way. The main reason was trade, but also the need to change or replenish horses. Towns along the Great North Road comprise of rows of coaching inns. Think of Eaton Socon, Buckden, Huntingdon, Stilton or Stamford. The road brought trade to everyone in it's path who could exploit it. It also used different river crossings from the Roman ones because the technology had improved.

Trade brought its own hazards, and not just from highwaymen like Dick Turpin. The waves of plague that swept through the population of England over several hundred years depended on routes like the Great North Road to act as a vector for the disease. This is ironic because people like Samuel Pepys, who moved from London to my village to escape the plague, put themselves right in the route that the disease would take, indeed, they brought it with them. Up and down the Great North Road there are abandoned "plague villages" which can be traced in abandoned churches or simply as lumps on the ground. Within a few miles of here, the Medieval villages of Boughton, Midloe and Southoe are little more than lumps in the fields.

The North-South divide may not be a myth, but it is still hard to define. The Great North Road has played its part in breaking down that divide by allowing people to be more mobile. If you look at any war memorial from the First World War, you will see just a handful of local surnames. From the Second World War you might see the addition of a few Scottish, Irish or Welsh names, but today you would see a much more diverse set of names, indicating that people are becoming more mobile.

How do you define "The North"? Signs on the A1 might read "Hatfield and the North" or just "The North" so how do you know when you get there? After a point, maybe there are no signs to "The North", just "A1 North"? Is it simply a matter of regional boundaries? If you have left The Midlands, you must be in The North? You have to ask the locals, but you may need a translator!

My own research says that, until you reach Stamford, people have no identity with the north. Then it gets complicated. To my ear, they certainly sound northern. Perhaps we have to ask people along the way, "Do you think of yourself as a Northerner?"

I think that you have to cross the Trent to get into "The North," so, on the A1, Ferry Bridge is the boundary, but that's an oversimplification. What about Lincolnshire? It's not the Midlands, it's not East Anglia, so is it The North?

My section of The Great North Road closely follows the boundary between the East Midlands and East Anglia. Why does that matter? The answer is that crossing from Cambridgeshire to Northamptonshire or Bedfordshire, you don't just change counties, you change regions and regions have their own newspapers, radio and TV stations and distribution networks. So a newsworthy event that happens just a few miles from my home will be reported in the East Midlands, but not in East Anglia where I live. I shop in Cambridge; people across the other side of the Great North Road go to different towns for their shopping or entertainment. We simply don't mix.

Heading south at Tempsford.

The landscape changes too. On my side of the road it's pretty flat. We have very large fields growing rape, cereals, beans and sugar beet, with virtually no livestock and very few trees. East Anglian farmers grasped the idea of modern, prairie-style farming with both fists while their Midland cousins inherited small fields with hedges and copses. They still keep sheep and cattle over there.

The reasons behind this all deserve a bit of research. Next time I'm going to be asking why the Romans chose this route and why we keep using it.