[This is about new arterial roads in the 1930s, but clearly Mr Ede, the speaker, is referring to the notorious C19 trainline across WC - something "everybody will know and deplore", as it were.]
National Parks
09 December 1936
Volume 318
I hope that for the roads which are to supersede some of the existing trunk roads no land will be taken from commons unless it is absolutely necessary, and that in no case will a road be driven across a common.
By driving an arterial road across a common you do not cut it into two parts, you destroy it from the point of view of its usefulness as a national park. We have only to remember the case of Mitcham Common, how it was cut up by a railway company, and Wandsworth Common to see the kind of damage which can be done by driving an arterial road through the middle of a great common.
It is no answer to say that the same number of acres have been put somewhere else on the edge. In these days we like to get away sometimes from the sound and smell of the motor car. However useful it may be in certain circumstances, there are moments when we desire to forget that we live in a mechanical age, and I feel that a great work has been done in getting a green belt round London, so as to increase the acreage over which people can roam without wondering whether they are going to be mowed down by some fast moving vehicle.
I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will convey to the Minister of Transport what is the obvious feeling of the House on this matter. The Minister of Transport will not be so readily accessible to local feeling as the county council. In some of the remoter parts of England a common may be destroyed and great local indignation felt, but people may find it difficult to make that indignation felt in the Ministry of Transport.
[Hansard: Link]