Historic Roads

Roads go back as far as people where on the earth, several roads are mentioned in the bible book of Genesis, clearly they have been around for a long time. Many of these roads transversed continents bringing trade Caravans containing manufactured goods from one country to another.

Roads in Britain go back to pre historic times, many of todays roads where once early tracks between villages, however the first serious road building in Britain was the Romans, added to by the Anglo Saxons as the built new villages this evolved to be eventually be taken over by the Turnpike system which improved and modernised the road system in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the turnpikes where the basis for modern road system.

After the first world war the roads where numbered as happened to the A6, improvements started to be made to the trunk road system that the A6 was then part of in the 1920's and 30's. After world war two motorways started to be builtcreating a brand new network.

Historic Roads that Became The A6

In this section we try to trace the routes of the A6 back to Roman times and look at how the route has changed. For example in Cumbria the A6 follows a Roman Road from Carlisle to Penrith, however the Roman road then continues along the pennine's past the village of Tebay to a place called Old Borough Bridge. then continuing along the pennine's. From Penrith to Kendal the Roman traveler would have had to follow this road (nearer to the line of today's M6), then followed another road from Old Borough Bridge to Kendal (roughly along the A685). Another route could be followed as a Roman road went south easterly from Penrith to Ambleside (near to the A592) however neither of these roads cross Shap fells on the A6 route. When did the shap route supercede these other two? It is questions like this we hope to answer in this section.

Index of Pages in this Section

Other Useful Sites

Roman Roads. An educational site showing the makeup of a Roman Road

Anglo Saxon Times a site giving a timeline of the Anglo Saxons who where responsible for many of today's roads in Britain

Turnpikes. Part of the BBC website giving facts about turnpikes