A491 road

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The A491 is an A road in Zone 4 of the Great Britain numbering scheme.

It runs from Kingswinford to the motorway junction at Lydiate Ash north of Bromsgrove, where it joins A38 road at M5 motorway Junction 4. It passes through Wordsley, Amblecote, Stourbridge, Oldswinford, Pedmore and Hagley. It then bypasses Clent and Belbroughton. Both of these lie on the old original course of the road (now declassified), replaced when a feederway was opened in the 1960s to link Stourbridge with M5, when then terminated at Lydiate Ash. Its old course between Fairfield (in Belbroughton) and Bromsgrove is now B4091.

The road north of Oldswinford forms part of an ancient road, probably of Anglo-Saxon origin, joining the burhsWorcester to Stafford. The crossing of the River Stour was probably the swine-ford that gave rise to the placenames Kingswinford and Oldswinford, and later to the name Stourbridge.[1]

The road from Wordsley Green to the Market House in Stourbidge and so to Bromsgrove was turnpiked in 1753. The same act also dealt with several other roads from that Market House, as well as the road from Birmingham through Halesowen and Hagley to Blakedown Pool, but that was managed by separate trustees from 1773.[2] Its continuation north of Wordsley Green, through Wolverhampton, and Stafford to Stone, much of it now part of A449 road was turnpiked by the Wolverhampton Turnpike Act of 1760.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ P. W. King, 'Some roads out of north Worcestershire' Transactions of Worcesterhire Archaeological Society 3rd ser. 20 (2006), 88.
  2. ^ Statutes, 26 Geo. II, c.47; 13 Geo. III, c.107.
  3. ^ Statute, 1 Geo. III, c.38.