A47 road

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Sentinel, by Tim Tolkien. Sculpture near the wartime spitfire factory near Birmingham
Sentinel, by Tim Tolkien. Sculpture near the wartime spitfire factory near Birmingham
A47 road
Direction
Start
End
Roads joined


The A47 is a trunk road in England linking Birmingham to Great Yarmouth (although most of the section between Birmingham and Nuneaton has been reclassified as the B4114).

Contents

[edit] Route

From west to east, the road goes through:

[edit] Detail

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Humberstone Gate in Leicester (ex-A47)
Humberstone Gate in Leicester (ex-A47)
Thickthorn Interchange between the A47 and A11.
Thickthorn Interchange between the A47 and A11.

Starting from the A4540 Middleway (middle ring road) one mile from the centre of Birmingham, the A47 leads in a north-easterly direction, passing close to Star City, then runs more or less parallel to the M6 for about three miles, passing Fort Dunlop and terminating at the Sentinel sculpture of three spitfire aeroplanes near Castle Vale. Here the road becomes the B4114, after a short diversion under the M6, leaving the Birmingham conurbation to pass through Coleshill.

At Nuneaton, the road re-emerges as the A47 from a junction with the A444, near a BP garage at the Anker service station on Weddington Road. Leaving Nuneaton, it passes a Total garage. It meets the A5 Watling Street, which it follows for a half-mile, then leaves at a roundabout to bypass Hinckley. This section passes through a large industrial estate and close to a Tesco. It passes a large Morrisons store next to a roundabout near Redmoor High School. It passes close to Barwell, then enters Earl Shilton[1], passing the Heathfield High School Near to the B582 crossroads, there is a BP garage. It enters Leicester Forest East, crossing the M1 near the service station. There is a busy roundabout with the A563 Leicester outer ring-road. It passes a BP garage at the St James service station. Entering the city centre, it crosses the River Soar and the Grand Union Canal. Leaving Leicester, it becomes Humberstone Road, then Uppingham Road. It passes under the Midland Main Line, then passes a Total garage at the St Matthews service station. At Humberstone, just before the A563 junction it passes a Shell garage at the Trocadero service station. This was once the site of Leicester's Trocadero Theatre which was burned down in a huge fire many years ago. The Rolling Stones played here in 1965. At Thurnby, it passes a Texaco garage at Harris Motors.

The road passes through Houghton on the Hill. The two-mile £2.5m Billesdon Bypass opened in October 1986. The transmitter for Leicester Sound is situated here. The one-kilometre £1.2m East Norton Bypass, in Leicestershire, opened in December 1990. The next ten miles are in Rutland. The two-mile £1.9m Wardley Hill Improvement opened in October 1987. The one-and-a-half-mile £1.4m Uppingham Bypass opened in June 1982. This is the home of Uppingham School. At Morcott, there is a popular Little Chef, and a Texaco garage at the Morcott service station. The Duddington Bypass, in Northamptonshire, opened in 1975. The road crosses the River Welland. This section has a busy roundabout where it meets the south-west/north-east corridor A43. From here to the A1, the road goes close to the runway of RAF Wittering, in Cambridgeshire. The dual-carriageway £9m Ailsworth-Castor Bypass opened in September 1991.

Around Peterborough, the Peterborough Longthorpe Grade separated junction (GSJ) opened in December 1987. The £1.2m Peterborough Westwood GSJ opened in January 1987. This section of road is called the Soke Parkway. When this was first built, in the mid-1970s, the A47 followed what is now the A1139 Paston Parkway.

The three-mile £7.2m Eye Bypass opened in October 1991, diverting traffic from the Paston Parkway. A three-mile dual-carriageway bypass of Thorney opened on 14th December 2005. The half-mile £3.7m Guyhirn Diversion opened in October 1990. The five-mile £6m Wisbech/West Walton Bypass opened in Autumn 1984. The six-mile £23m dual-carriageway Walpole Highway/Tilney High End Bypass, in Norfolk, opened in summer 1996.

From Kings Lynn, the road goes over the River Great Ouse, near to some sugar beet factories on a very busy dual-carriageway built in the 1970s. The A17, A10 and the A149 have their terminus here, at the Hardwick Flyover. The half-mile £2.8m Narborough Bypass, in Norfolk, opened in November 1992. The five-mile £5m part-dual-carriageway Swaffham Bypass opened in June 1981. The seven-mile £5m part-dual-carriageway East Dereham Bypass opened in spring 1978, which crosses over a level crossing on the Mid-Norfolk Railway. The three-mile £9m East Dereham-North Tuddenham Improvement opened in August 1992, being built on an old disused railway line. The dual-carriageway £62m Norwich Bypass opened in September 1992. The section from the end of this bypass to Blofield, the one-mile £1.2m Postwick-Blofield Dualling, was opened in November 1987 The one-mile £4m dual-carriageway Blofield Bypass opened in February 1983. The three-mile £7.1m dual-carriageway Acle Bypass opned in March 1989. From Acle, the road enters the infamous "Acle Straight" which is nearly 7 miles of dead straight and near level single carriageway all the way to Great Yarmouth, with just one curve at Road House Diner. The road is notorious for conjestion, especially during the holiday season, and also for the number of accidents, which due to the drainage ditches on either side of the road are often fatal, and demands for dualing have been heard for many years, although there are no current plans to go ahead with this. The northern section of the two-mile £19m Great Yarmouth Western Bypass opened in March 1986, and the southern section opened in May 1985.

[edit] History of the road number

The original (1923) route of the A47 was Birmingham to Great Yarmouth, but there were some changes made to its route in the early years. At its eastern end, the A47 originally ran through Filby and Caister, with the Acle Straight bearing the number B1140. The A47 was rerouted along the Acle straight in 1935, with the old route being renumbered as the A1064 (Acle to Caister) and part of the A149 (Caister to Great Yarmouth).

The second change also dates from 1935. The A47 originally ran via Downham Market, not King's Lynn. In 1935, it was rerouted via King's Lynn, replacing part of the A141 (Wisbech to King's Lynn) and part of the A17 (King's Lynn to Swaffham). The old route via Downham Market was renumbered as the A1122 (Outwell to Swaffham) and part of the A1101 (Wisbech to Outwell).

The third change took place some time before 1932. The original route of the A47 between Guyhirne and Wisbech was via Wisbech St Mary, with the direct route being part of the A141. This is because there was no road bridge over the River Nene at Guyhirne, and hence no junction between the A47 and the A141. Some time between 1923 and 1932 a bridge was built, and the A47 and the A141 swapped routes between Guyhirne and Wisbech.

[edit] External links

A roads in Zone 4 of
the Great Britain road numbering system
edit
A4 A40 - A41 - A42 - A43 - A44 - A45 - A46 - A47 - A48 - A49
A403 - A404 - A406 - A412 - A413 - A414 - A417 - A418 - A419
A420 - A421 - A422 - A423 - A425 - A426 - A427 - A428 - A429
A431 - A432 - A435 - A441 - A442 - A445 - A449
A452 - A453 - A454 - A456 - A458 - A461 - A465 - A470 - A472 - A478 - A482 - A483 - A487 - A488
A494 - A497 - A498 - A499
A4006 - A4012 - A4018 - A4025 - A4032 - A4040 - A4042 - A4094
A4103 - A4113 - A4117 - A4150 - A4133 - A4135 - A4142 - A4146 - A4155 - A4174
A4202 - A4212 - A4260 - A4400 - A4536 - A4540
List of A roads in Zone 4
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