A151 road
The A151 road is relatively minor part of the British road system. It lies entirely in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Its western end lies at coordinates otherwise,.
The A151: summary
In the early 19th century, the A151 would have been called a cross-road since it runs across the pattern of these radial routes. As originally designated, it ran from the A15 at Bourne Market Place, eastwards to Fleet Hargate, three kilometres east of Holbeach, on the A17. Its present western section, between Colsterworth and Bourne, was part of the B676 road.Road building and re-thinking of the road system have meant that nowadays, its western end is on the A1 near Colsterworth, in the administrative district of South Kesteven, and its eastern end on the A17 near Holbeach, in the district of South Holland. On the way, it passes to the north of Grimsthorpe Castle and at, just to the south of Bourne Woods. Then at, it bisects Bourne. It enters The Fens on the eastern edge of that small town. At, it passes through the hamlet of Twenty, in Bourne North Fen. At Guthram Gowt, it leaves Kesteven by crossing the South Forty-Foot Drain into the Parts of Holland. Spalding, the principal town of South Holland, is also the main town on the A151 route. Across the River Welland, lie Moulton, then Holbeach, near which the A151 ends at the A17. That road leads on to King's Lynn and East Anglia.
History: turnpike roads
As elsewhere, roads in England have developed over many years. Perhaps some of the A151 lies on lines which are pre-Roman. In other words, parts are two thousand or more years old. However, change is constant and little of the road is that old. In the nature of things, these changes are poorly or not at all documented, so will be treated generally, in that light, in an overview below. The historical part of the story begins with the turnpike roads.The A151 was originally designated such in 1921. Then, the roads were much as they had been forty or fifty years before, under the turnpike trusts. Since the Second World War, there has been much building of by-passes and the like so that the precise lines have sometimes changed but they are still fundamentally the same. The main difference in the present case is that the road designation has been extended from the A15 at Bourne to the A1 at Colsterworth, while at the other end, the easternmost three kilometres have been replaced by a new part of the A17.
In the field of acts of Parliament founding turnpike trusts, much was happening locally in 1756. The Wansford to Stamford trust on the Great North Road had been set up in 1749 but in 1756, its sphere was extended through Stamford to Bourne. The last 1.6 kilometres of this road, as the trust left it, running down the hill to Bourne Market Place, are now part of the A151. It was freed from tolls on 1 November 1871. The half of this section which lies outside the modern town was probably built by the trust between 1756 and the Bourne enclosure awards of 1770–1.
The Lincoln Heath to Peterborough Trust was also established in 1756. Its remit included the forerunner of the present A15 which crosses the end of the Stamford road at Bourne Market Place. However, also included with this was the road from the Stamford road west of Bourne, to Colsterworth. With the exception of the western extremity, in Colsterworth village, this is now part of the A151. It was freed from tolls on 1 November 1882.
The Lincoln Heath to Peterborough trust was organized in districts of which that covering the road from Colsterworth to Stamford Hill, Bourne was the ‘'West District'’. In 1860, it was re-grouped with the ‘'Middle District'’ which extended from Graby Bar to Market Deeping.
From Spalding, through Holbeach to Long Sutton, beyond the end of the modern A151, the road was turnpiked in 1764. It was freed from tolls on 1 November 1866. It may not be coincidental that this was the year of the final opening of the railway from Bourne to King's Lynn, the line having been opened in stages from 1858. This road was declared a main road by the Highways Act 1878.
The road from Bourne to Spalding was turnpiked in 1822 and freed from tolls in 1860. It was declared a main road by the Highways Act 1878. Before 1822, this section was in three parts. One led out from Bourne onto Bourne North Fen. The Spalding end led out from Spalding to the Spalding and Pinchbeck fen edge bank. The linking section was not officially a road. There was however, some droving traffic which was frowned upon by the drainage authorities, whose embankments it tended to erode. According to Cary's map of 1787, the official route ran via Tongue End and crossed the River Glen at Gurthram.
Toll gates
The principal source of information about the positions of toll gates is the Ordnance Survey 1 inch map published in 1824. It places them as follows:- Corby Toll Bar.
- T P.
- T P.
- T P.
- Friers Bar.
- T P.
- T P.
- T P. .
- T P.
It is noticeable and a little surprising that according to the Ordnance Survey, it was possible in some cases to go a long way out of a town before coming to a toll gate. This is particularly noticeable eastwards from Spalding.
Condition of the turnpike roads
We have a few references to the condition of parts of the turnpike forerunners of the A151. Arthur Young's book on the Lincolnshire economy was published in 1813, while the first Fosdyke bridge was still under construction. He therefore, will have taken the future A151 between Spalding and Fleet Hargate on his journey from Boston to Wisbech. He wrote of it thus: In the Hundred of Skirbeck to Boston, and thence to Wisbeach, are generally made with silt, or old sea-sand, deposited under various parts of the country ages ago, and when moderately wet are very good; but dreadfully dusty and heavy in dry weather; and also on a thaw they are like mortar. Take the county in general, and they must be esteemed below par. What he is saying is that the turnpike roads in the Townlands were made of the same marine silt as forms the land itself in that part of the country. The heaviness in dry weather to which he refers, arose from the loose, deep, sandy surface through which wheels would have to be dragged.According to Wheeler, of silt was reckoned to cover in a length of a road, thick and wide, the silt costing about 8d. to 10d. per ton for digging and spreading. In some cases the road was turned over. That is a pit was dug in the road until the silt was reached then that was dug out and formed into the carriageway. The surface of the next length was dug and put into the pit as a foundation then the silt dug and placed on top of it and so on along the road.
Gravel was used where obtainable and from about 1870, Wheeler introduced granite. By the end of the 20th century granite and slag were being consolidated by steam roller Of the Bourne to Colsterworth road, Young said we were every moment either buried in quagmires of mud or racked to dislocation over pieces of rock which they term mending. Materials and methods for repairing fenland roads are described by Wheeler. The best material available was dug locally from pits.
Terrain
When roads are built by engineers with capital to support their work, they are successfully able to build roads across difficult soils. Modern road builders have less need to seek out easy geological conditions. When roads were made not by civil engineers but by people walking on the ground, the road followed the soils which were found to be easiest under foot.The A151 passes across two types of country, the upland and the fen. The highest point on it lies within a kilometre of its western end at 123 metres above mean sea level. It then passes across a gently sloping dissected plateau of Jurassic rocks capped in its highest parts by glacial clay. After about 16 kilometres, it enters the fen and is soon at about two metres, rising to three, nearer the coast.
Description
Western End
Having for some time, extended its influence by diplomacy and trade, The Roman Empire began to take control in Britain from the year 43. An important part of the means of control was the building of soundly-built roads, running directly between key places. This led the engineers to overcome all but the greatest obstacles rather than going round them. One result of this was that they built roads on soils which others would have avoided. When the Roman authorities had withdrawn from Britain and their roads wore out, people began to wander from the Roman road lines where they could find a more secure footing by taking another line.The Roman equivalent of the A1 was built to a very high standard, during the early years of Roman rule in Britain. The English successors of the Romans in Britain, called this road Ermine Street from their word for "soldier", compare the German personal name, Herman. The twenty kilometre length of Ermine Street, at roughly the centre of which, the line of the A151 lies, passed over chalky till which is very sticky when wet. As the Ermine Street carriageway broke up, people sought easier going by moving down towards the small River Witham whose valley had been eroded through the till, into the Jurassic limestone below it.
Thus, in 1756 when the Colsterworth to Bourne road was turnpiked, the toll road which was to become the A151 began at the crossroads in Colsterworth, further west than it now does, though the first toll gate noted by the 1824 Ordnance Survey map was about three kilometres from there. When the Colsterworth bypass was built, its southern half was placed virtually on the Ermine Street line so that now, while the A151 still begins at the A1, it is not at the old Great North Road but at Ermine Street, on the chalky till soil that we start our journey. Bourne Road, Colsterworth, the section removed from the A151, remains part of the B676, the road which leads westwards, towards Melton Mowbray.
Once the clutter associated with a trunk road junction is left behind, the road passes through agricultural land and woods. To the north are fairly level fields and to the south, Twyford Wood, which cloaks the remains of North Witham airfield.