West Cross Route: Interim Report on Stage I (1962)

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Date1961
Available to view atNational Archives
Owned byChris5156
TypePublications (see all artefacts)

The full title of this item is West Cross Route: South of Holland Park Avenue. Consulting Engineers' Interim Report on Stage I - Holland Park Avenue to Kensington High Street.

Context

This report, written by the consulting engineers Husband & Co., and produced with the collaboration of the London County Council's Chief Engineer, Architect and Valuer, is first and foremost a historical document helping to pin down the precise details of part of what became the London Ringways proposal.

It has a broader significance too, however, because it was published in 1962 and proves that strategic motorway plans were being drawn up by the London County Council, and that the Ringways project was not purely a scheme of its successor, the Greater London Council. The fact that consultants were invited to produce this report in mid-1961, and that the report acknowledges that the section of the WCR north of Holland Park Avenue had already been designed and approved, makes it clear that the London County Council had been drawing up plans for the Motorway Box (later Ringway 1) for some time - probably as far back as the mid-1950s or earlier.

Contents of note

  • Brief history of the commissioning of the report itself.
  • Summary of three selected options for the route, and details of the preferred one.
  • Four perspective line-drawings, on fold-out sheets, depicting each of the three selected options as viewed from the west, plus a fourth showing the entire West Cross Route from Holland Park Avenue to almost the River Thames.

Links to related files

GLC/TD/DP/LDS/02/098 West Cross Route drawings Holland Park Avenue - Chelsea Basin (1970)
MT 106/188 Principal roads and motorways: GLC; West Cross route, stage 2; consultants report and drawings (1961-1969)

How to view it

Details from this, and also the full report on the West Cross Route as a whole (a separate, later document) are included in the Ringways feature.