A HISTORY OF
WANDSWORTH COMMON
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Index
Trinity Road
1960s
The "Balham Loop" - a motorway through the Common along the Brighton Main Line railway, e.1960s
— 1930s
— 1940s (Abercrombie * F, County Plan
— 1950s
— 1960s
— 2000s
A motorway on the railway line c.1963.
An early draft of the London Motorway Box (unknown date but no later than 1963.
Notice that the new motorway would run across the Common along the railway line - above? below? alongside?
Trinity Rd itself would be extended down to Wandsworth Bridge, but otherwise no other changes are shown. Notice that the map, although crude, still shows the small deviation at the (original) end of Trinity Road, and projects Trinity forward as dotted lines.
In our area, major interchanges are shown (as circles) at Balham, Clapham Junction, and at the Fulham end of Wandsworth Bridge.
This short section of motorway was planned to head south from a point just west of Clapham Junction, peeling off from the Clapham-Wandsworth Link which was to follow the railway between Putney and Clapham Junction. The Balham Loop would follow the Brighton Main Line railway through Balham itself, curving east to Tooting Bec Common where a three-way interchange would form the northern terminus of the M23.
From here it would continue east, terminating at Tulse Hill on Parkway E, another radial motorway planned to run out through West Norwood to Addington. Just one junction would be provided to connect the motorway to the surface street network, located immediately west of the M23 at the A24 Balham High Street.
[Roads.org: Ringways: Balham Loop]
The background
... the London County Council's planners couldn't include the "A" Ring or any other major new road in their official policy, and for the rest of the 1950s their skeleton programme of minor junction improvements continued. Behind the scenes, however, there were no such restrictions. It was accepted wisdom within the Council, the Ministry and Government at large that the traffic problem was a catastrophe in the making; sooner or later, drastic action would have to be taken. And so, secretly, the LCC continued to think about new ring roads.
Nothing could realistically be built as close to Central London as the old "A" Ring. Instead, Abercrombie's two inner rings were scrapped, and the LCC's team of planners looked elsewhere to find a more accommodating route. A circuit was possible following railway tracks, further out than had previously been thought ideal and at varying distances from the centre, but land would be cheaper and following railways would be far less disruptive.
The new route was a trapezoidal motorway through Willesden, Highbury, Hackney, Blackheath, Brixton, Clapham and Shepherd's Bush. They called it the London Motorway Box.
Several iterations of the Box were drafted, with adjustments to the route, the location of junctions, connecting spurs and radial routes...
London's epic road plan had just been born - and nobody knew anything about it....
The cat was let out of the bag in the most bizarre of circumstances. In 1964, Battersea Borough Council wanted to build a swimming pool as part of the new Winstanley Estate near Clapham Junction, but couldn't get planning permission.
The fact came out under persistent questioning that the then London County Council was sitting on plans for a vast network of motorway rings round London, a section of which would sweep through the site where the baths might be. - New Society, 1 August 1968
Government files from the same period suggest the dispute was not as dramatic as this article would suggest, but nonetheless a situation was reached where not just some swimming baths but also a brand new twelve storey tower block were on the line of a planned motorway, resulting in the exchange of a considerable amount of disgruntled correspondence.
The secrecy would have to come to an end because the plans were going to have to be published sooner or later, but that wouldn't be the London County Council's problem.
On 1 April 1965 the old LCC was abolished and replaced by the new Greater London Council, which would pick up the task of planning London's future road network - and it would do so with more enthusiasm and vigour than any organisation before or since.
Roads.org: Ringways: Balham Loop Related sources:
Roads.org: Ringways: Post-war planning
Roads.org: Ringways: A Plan for Greater London (not excerpted here)
Roads.org: Ringways: South Cross Route (not excerpted here since north of Wandsworth Common) - Brixton - Clapham - Battersea - Clapham Junction - Chelsea
Roads.org: Ringways: Clapham-Wandsworth link
(Click on image to enlarge)
Here today, gone tomorrow
"Dozens of copies of the map [of the proposed GLC roads programme] are found scattered through archive documents about motorway planning in London, and in some of them the Balham Loop has been crudely scribbled out, a quick and undignified end for the GLC's shortest-lived, and perhaps its strangest, road proposal."
(Click on image to enlarge)
Here today, gone tomorrow
Proposals for the Balham Loop were under wraps until 1966, when they were finally published as part of GLC's grand unveiling of the plans for Ringway 1 - though they were almost certainly legally safeguarded years earlier than that, and householders along the route might well have known that there was trouble brewing.
The GLC seemed to favour the name "Balham Loop" and it appeared in some literature and news reporting of the time. In general, however, the London Motorway Box made the headlines, casting a bigger and far more worrying shadow over a much larger area.
The Balham Loop's time in the spotlight was decidedly short-lived. It, and the northernmost section of M23 that was to connect to it, both vanished within a year. Various South London newspapers suggest that it had already been deleted in early 1967.
...the G.L.C. ended anxiety for many families living in Wandsworth by dropping the "Balham Loop" section from its scheme. This part of the proposed motorway box for inner London, which had previously been "safeguarded", is no longer required because the Transport Ministry has decided that the M.23 from Brighton can stop its main journey into the centre at an earlier interchange at Streatham Vale - "London's Motorway Network Takes Shape", Wandsworth Boro' News, 27 January 1967114.19 KBThe Balham Loop, removed from the Provisional Urban Motorway Plan
The headline for that report was "London's Motorway Network Takes Shape: Elevated Road through Wandle Valley", and it was mainly concerned with the newly announced line of Ringway 2 between Wandsworth and Streatham Vale. The arrival of Ringway 2 meant the M23 could be terminated further south at Streatham Vale, missing out the difficult bit from there to Tooting Bec Common, and without the M23 there was no need for the Balham Loop.
Its deletion from the GLC's roads programme came so soon after the motorway plans were formally announced that it continued to appear on standard maps of Ringway 1 - known as the "Provisional Urban Motorway Plan" - for several years afterwards, presumably until a new print run was ordered.
Dozens of copies of the map are found scattered through archive documents about motorway planning in London, and in some of them the Balham Loop has been crudely scribbled out, a quick and undignified end for the GLC's shortest-lived, and perhaps its strangest, road proposal.
Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach
[VERY INTERESTING!]
GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/075
Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach
Date range 1965-1969
Location London Metropolitan Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue See entry
File base Fond GLC, subfond DG/PTI/PSome inside information on the elusive and mysterious 1960s scheme to plough an enormous dual three-lane white elephant through Wandsworth, which seemed for a long time to be completely at odds with the Ringway plans. It now appears that it was planned in conjunction with them, and this file for the first time indicates how it would have interacted with the planned motorway network.
It seems that Wandsworth Bridge, built in the 1930s, didn't actually have a southern approach road to begin with, and terminated on what is now Old York Road near what is now the northern corner of the huge squareabout. The LCC set about reserving land for this road scheme as early as 1939.
In June 1966 the GLC revised the road scheme to make the underpass (and by association the rest of the short dual carriageway) dual three-lane rather than dual two. These changes also saw the roundabout slightly modified and the wide central reserve added to allow space for a future flyover northwards.
The Ministry of Transport agreed to these changes (worth %200,000) on the understanding that an equivalent Northern Approach would also be created and the Bridge itself would be substantially widened.
A memo from July 1966 indicates that any future work on this road would depend on the outcome of the London Transportation Study, but the likely proposal (and therefore the assumption on which this road was built) was that
Trinity Road would be widened in similar fashion to "Burntwood Lane and beyond" - for which one can assume it was heading for the A24 - and that a Northern Approach would be built linking to the West Cross Route via Townmead Road. Sure enough the West Cross Route plans show a previously-inexplicable connection to Townmead Road.Roads.org: Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach
Trinity Road to end in a massive flyover?
MT 118/379
A3 Trunk Road: Wandsworth Bridge (southern approach); construction of underpass diaphragm wall incorporating instruments for measurement of earth thrust and other variables. Pt 3 of 3 Date range 1967 Location National Archives (see all files stored here) Catalogue See entry File base Series MT, subseries MT 118 Context
This file has a misleading title - it does refer to the construction of an improved approach road to Wandsworth Bridge, but that road is A214. The A3 just passes over the top. Additional confusion is evident on the file itself, which is labelled "A4 Wandsworth Bridge Approach".
Contrary to what seems to have been thought previously, this file makes it clear that the Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach scheme (for which the entire contract papers are in this file) was made by the GLC, not Wandsworth Borough. It follows that this scheme can't have been made in isolation from the plans, juicy though that story might be.
The file is mostly dry tender documents - yawn. However, a folder right at the back contains two plan drawings that rescue the file from terminal tedium.
They show, in plan and elevation, the full dual carriageway scheme from Wandsworth Common to Wandsworth Bridge, including the large squareabout near the Thames.
The plans prove that there was a planned flyover, which was to cross the railway and the roundabout. The elevation plans show that it was supposed to reach road level to the north before the Thames, something that seems difficult on the ground.
The flyover line does look fairly steep. There is, however, no information on whether the bridge was to be widened, or how wide the flyover was supposed to be, but for any kind of grade separation, Wandsworth Bridge would need to be wider than it is now.
The elevation plan also has a block marked alongside the railway labelled "future motorway". This, excitingly, appears to be a little flash of the virtually ethereal Ringway 1 - Ringway 2 link that would have run from Wandsworth to Clapham Junction. From the information available it's clear that it would be immediately south of the railway here - 30 feet from the bridge, to be exact. The plan refers to other diagrams which have details of flyover, etc. These are - naturally - not present.
Contents of note
Those lovely plans, revealing all sorts of secrets.
Roads.org: A3 Trunk Road, Wandsworth Bridge (southern approach), underpass diaphragm wall - misleading title - it is in fact about A214, i.e. Trinity Road