About the research project
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The information on the following pages is quite easily the biggest amateur research project ever conducted into the history of British roads - and considering it deals with plans formulated by one of the most influential local government organisations of its time, less than fifty years ago, it is proving unbelievably difficult. This page explains what we're researching and why. Subsequent pages launch straight into the history itself.
How did the project get started?
It's hard to say. We have been researching the Ringways in a semi-academic way since 2002 at least: Tom Sutch discovered the planned routes of the North and West Cross Routes and put them on his website then. CBRD first featured an article on The Decline and Fall of Ringway 2 (then called just "Ringway 2") in late 2002.
Research really gained pace and became a concerted effort in early 2005. However, in the intervening period, it was still plodding along in the background, with the collation of various maps showing fragments of the routes.
Where does your information come from?
Much of our information comes from libraries' local history archives, which hold back-catalogues of local newspapers either bound or on microfilm. Contemporary newspaper reports are proving to be the most reliable source in that they are always available and there is always something relevant in them. On the other hand they rarely give many details. There have been a couple of scoops; we've come across three occasions where full-size motorway plans were published in local newspapers.
Information can also be found - in papers, microfilm or aperture cards - in official documentation. Most useful are engineering drawings or "blueprint" diagrams of road layouts, but these are rarely available and some even remain subject to strict copyright rules. Some local authority publicity (particularly GLC) can also be found, such as leaflets describing the Ringway plans.
A lot of important route information has been found in published maps - many published in the 1960s and 70s by Bartholomew, Geographia and A-Z, and to a lesser extent the Ordnance Survey, show a dotted line where nothing subsequently appeared. Usually this information provides a starting point, suggesting where and when to target research.
Why is it so hard to find information?
We don't know. At the moment it seems quite confusing that such a vast scheme, planned in such detail, is not recorded in one place. We would expect there to be two systems, as some parts of the Ringway plan were the responsibility of the Greater London Council and others the Ministry of Transport. But worryingly, there are only the smallest fragments turning up a piece at a time.
For example, the London Metropolitan Archive, which supposedly retains all the former GLC's documents, only has plans for a few interchanges in the north-east of the conurbation. Local authorities usually have no official documents - sometimes little more than a handful of press cuttings.
From some perspectives it's starting to look like the project wasn't just halted, but comprehensively destroyed - either to prevent further bad publicity or simply to reduce storage costs. Plans of roads that were built must be retained for legal reasons; plans of roads that don't exist are just taking up space.
Who is involved?
Tom Sutch can be credited with the earliest serious research on the Ringway plans, uncovering the route of parts of Ringway 1. His pages on Ringway 1, previously on his own website, have now been merged into this site.
Chris Marshall - otherwise known as the handsome and glamorous proprietor of CBRD - spends spare afternoons digging through The National Archives near his home in London, and has written up most of the findings. He compiled the Google Earth mapping.
Steven Jukes has dredged up scores of ancient maps showing projected motorway lines and has photographed some of the sites intended for motorways in London. Some of his work also appears on his own site, Pathetic Motorways, which documents the parts of the plan that still exist.
Nathaniel Porter clicked his way around London, drawing up detailed junction layouts on the Ringway Map and raising headache-inducing questions that, all the same, helped make sure we got things right.
Together they are known as The Ringway Four...
Are you looking for help?
The most difficult thing is knowing where we need help! We don't know what is still out there to find. No archive is ever indexed logically - if you want the M11, for example, you search for "M11"; if you want the M12 you need to search under "Radial Route 7". What do you know that we don't? Get in touch and help us out.
