Roads

The earliest tracks and fords were made by animals and the men who hunted them. Much of the Midlands was covered by forest and bog, so that routes of travel were usually along dry ridge-tops. Watercourses were crossed at places where gravelly drift provided firm footing and/or where an island created two channels - as at Salford, Greet, and Deritend. From medieval times the shallows below mill-dams, and the dams themselves, were favoured crossing-places : there were at least eight of these within the bounds of Birmingham (1974 Metropolitan District), including Stratford Road at Greet Mill on Cole, Old Bromsgrove Road at Over Mill on Chad Brook, and Lichfield Road at Sutton Town Mill on Ebrook.

The unpredictable River Rea bisects the Birmingham Plateau, separating the Black Country coal and iron from the produce of Arden and Avon. Deritend's ford was central and became the favoured one : a score of tracks led to it, causing a problem of traffic congestion in the cramped centre of Birmingham which has been solved in recent years only, at enormous expense. There was a footbridge at Deritend from the 13th C., and by 1392 stone wain bridges had been built over both channels with a causeway across the island and a raised approach (the Dyke Path which became Digbeth) across the flood-meadows of the west bank.

The Romans were Britain's first road-builders, and one of their local high-ways can still be seen in Sutton Park. 'Ryknild Street' has lost its sandstone paving, but the gravel 'agger' remains after 1500 years of neglect. Roman fords were made where needed, and when the paving crumbled they were abandoned - as at Perry Barr - unless they were at naturally good crossings. For many centuries there was no making of roads but only mending of lanes between villages by in-filling the worst holes and harrowing the surface to restore the level - and the lanes wound round bogs and fields without regard to directness. On slopes they were worn by hooves, wheels, and water into holloways far below the surrounding level. Where the Warwick/Stratford/Alcester Road met the Coventry Road at Bordesley, the gorge was sixty feet deep by the C18th. At winter's end most highways were furlong-wide strips of morass : travellers had a statutory duty and a natural inclination to tread out a new road on the edges of an impassable old one.

In 1726-7 the Wednesbury, Stratford, and Warwick Roads were the first to be taken over by Turnpike Trusts, with tollgates and keepers' houses at junctions. These were the routes from the Black Country, whence came Birmingham's fuel and raw material, from the Avon Navigation, and from the shire town and the capital.

2.1. Map 1

Ten other roads were turnpiked during the next century : the last, the Pershore Turnpike, was in part completely new, through the Reaside meadows, and very old through Stirchley, where it followed the line of Ryknild Street. The early Turn-pikes were somewhat improved in surface - though William Hutton still had much to say about their defects in 1780 - but not at all in alignment.

However, later improvements included bypasses of the worst holloways and village bottle-necks. Bromsgrove (Bristol) Road's winding part-Roman route was abandoned from Holloway Head to Bourn Brook via Edgbaston Old Church and Over Mill, and re-aligned as now. A happy result of the bypasses has been the isolation and thus the saving of such hamlets about ancient churches as Harborne, Northfield, Kings Norton, Sheldon, and Yardley.

Re-surfacing of roads to Macadam and Telford standards early last century permitted the use of light, fast coaches: after some decades of dominance that was little troubled by canal flyboats and stage-wagons, and briefly threatened by steam roadcars until they were priced off the Turnpikes, coach companies succumbed to the spreading railways. From mid-Cl9th the Trusts were abandoning their roads which were used by local traffic only. In Birmingham Streets Commissioners and Borough Council and in the country the shires, assumed responsibility for the highways.

The funnelling of so many roads into a small built-up area in Birmingham has been a growing problem for centuries. It necessitated the removal of the ancient markets to new sites, and much demolition. In the 1930's, when motor traffic and public transport choked the narrow streets of the centre, a succession of one-way systems was tried. Manzoni's drastic solution, the Inner Ring Road, was begun in the Fifties: it involved the clearance of 85 acres round the centre, and was designed to link eight improved radial roads. The plans were altered as traffic increased, and when the 2¼ miles of Queensway was completed in 1971 there was grade-separation at all junctions except the first, St. Martin's Circus. Subways every furlong and three overbridges cater for pedestrians. The 6½ miles of Middleway, intended to link a dozen radials farther out, is half completed with only three grade-separated junctions. The Outer Ring Road is little farther advanced than it was in 1939: part of it still lies along country lanes intersecting awkwardly with main roads.

Birmingham will be fully 'boxed' by motorways when M42 is completed. M6 crosses the northern suburbs, following river valleys. M5 joins it in Sandwell. Of the six planned highways to the motorways only the wholly new Aston Expressway (1972) has been completed, joining M6 at Gravelly Hill Multiple Interchange, universally known as 'Spaghetti Junction'.

2.2. Map 2