32 C O N T E X T 1 1 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 cover’ tunnels right through prime residential areas, now much valued for their architectural quality. The North Cross Route would have meant the compulsory purchase and demolition of Sigmund Freud’s Maresfield Gardens, now the Freud Museum, which is located in the heart of Hampstead. This is just one example of hundreds of other buildings in this location which were standing in the way of the route. The South Cross Route would have been equally destructive.Whole streets, as well as individual buildings, were set to be annihilated. This route, consisting of several lanes of motorway in each direction, would have run parallel with the railway line running towards London Bridge, and would have ploughed right through Blackheath. Carrying on west towards the city, the motorway was designed to stay close to the railway line at Peckham. Denmark Hill Station (Grade II listed, Italianate, built in 1865) would have become desolate on the central reservation of the motorway. Ringway 1 was then set to progress to Brixton. Transport planners proposed that at this point the motorway would be raised up on a concrete flyover, about six storeys above the heart of Brixton’s historic centre, running parallel with Brixton Road. To achieve this extraordinary feat, hundreds of buildings, mostly Victorian, would be demolished. Those which remained would lose their setting and all sense of architectural hierarchy beneath the roar of the motorway in the sky. Brixton Road itself dates back to Roman times, being part of the London to Brighton Way. It comprises Victorian terraces as well as individual villas, many of which are listed, and all of which contribute to the character of the area. Brixton is home to the first purpose-built department store in England, constructed for Bon Marché in 1905. Its decorative four-and-ahalf storeys would have been dwarfed by the flyover. The 1930s, art-decoinspired Brixton Markets, Reliance Arcade and buildings of Electric Lane would similarly have been seriously affected, if not demolished, to make way for the gargantuan pillars of the flyover. Having no planned exit road at Brixton, the flyover would have effectively isolated what was then a highly successful commercial area. Ringways 2, 3 and 4 were scarcely better considered. Ringway 2 was routed to cut a swathe through the heart of suburban London, including Grove Park. This would have affected the listed buildings of Grove Park Terrace and Harvard Road, some of which were designed by R Norman Shaw. Part of the southern section of Ringway 2 was to come up from the Wandle Valley and turn west to run alongside the Waterloo-to-Richmond railway line. From here it was set to run east towards Wandsworth town centre and Clapham junction, following the railway through the leafy suburbs of Putney and Barnes. The motorway would then have been tunnelled beneath Barnes Common and would have proceeded to devastate the town’s attractive waterfront. Chiswick, another victim along the route, would have become a windswept and marooned area of London caught between the new motorway, the M3 and M4. It has been estimated that half of Chiswick would have been demolished to accommodate Ringway 2. What is astonishing about these plans, besides the fact that they show an inexplicably cavalier approach to London’s historic fabric so soon after the war damage had been inflicted, is that the plans took so long to be axed. Ringway 1 alone would have been the most expensive public works scheme ever to be undertaken in Britain and would have displaced 90,000 people. The now-published plans were greeted by a huge public reaction, but for years there was no stopping the relentless move towards implementing this road system. New pressure groups set themselves up all over London, while existing amenity groups were organising themselves to fight on a scale as never before. The groups involved in opposing the ringways included the Save Battersea Campaign, the Chelsea Society, the Strand on the Green Society, the Kensington and Chelsea Residents Association, Grove Park Group and the Blackheath Motorway Action Group. Despite the vociferous objections, by 1970 the plans were still alive and well. By this date the cost of the Ringway 1 alone had risen to £1.7 billion (approximately £19 billion by today’s reckoning). Still the GLC pressed on. The Greater London Development Plan began its public inquiry (which became the longest lasting inquiry in Britain’s history at the time) in 1969. By this stage local authorities all over London were vigorously opposed to the schemes. But it was not until 1973 that the Treasury, which was expected to provide a 75 per cent grant towards the road-building, finally put an end to the proposals. A statement was issued which gave the reason as being that we no longer lived in an age where it was acceptable to evict thousands of people from their homes.While this is a good reason, one can not help but think that perhaps someone important in the Treasury chanced to see some updated costings that week. My brief overview of the ringway mania of the 1950s and 1960s has mentioned but a few buildings and areas which would have been destroyed by the proposals. To end on a positive note, however, the ringway schemes did galvanise what were often little more than friendly, neighbourhood societies into highly-organised, opposition campaign groups. These groups became very effective at turning the tide of development and encouraging local authorities to stand up to the GLC. The era of democratic, local objection had been born. This has subsequently produced great results for many threatened historic areas and buildings in the capital. Carole Fry, a director of AHC Consultants London has a long history of congestion.The 19th century engraving shows Ludgate Hill in the City of London.
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