Not quite Route 66: the Great North Road - by Alex Marchant
In a few days’ time, I’ll be
setting off southwards for a few days with family.
Having been
born in Surrey in the south of England, but lived for more than two decades in
Yorkshire in the north, this is a journey I undertake several times a year. My
parents still live in the house where I grew up, and my sister and her (rapidly
increasing) family live half an hour away, so it’s easy to kill lots of birds
with one stone, so to speak. This time I’ll be meeting a new addition to the
family so there’s plenty to look forward to.
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| Not an East Coast train - the Flying Scotsman visits Haworth |
Just a couple
of years ago there were two options for the journey – either my partner would drive us down, or I would take the train (with or without my own children in
tow). With ever-rising train fares in the UK, the latter sometimes seemed an
expensive luxury – until I began writing again a dozen years ago, and
discovered that the two hours spent in the ‘quiet carriage’ was the perfect opportunity
to concentrate on my books. I estimate that around a third of each of my books
has been written on trains.
The driving I
left to my partner. I was a late learner – only passing my test a couple of
months before my first child was born (I got the sympathy vote from the
examiner when I struggled to put my seatbelt on over the enormous bump) – and
then I did what I vowed I wouldn’t: avoided driving long distances and on
motorways. My partner liked that sort of driving, so why did I need to do it? And
there was always the train...
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| Gateway to Middleham Castle |
Fast forward
to 2013 and the start of research for my books about Richard III. The first is
set largely in Middleham in the Yorkshire Dales – a relatively short,
straightforward journey. The second moves south, to Northamptonshire, London,
Leicestershire, Suffolk. Location research drew on visits in previous years and
on targeted family holidays. (‘Oh no, not Richard III again,’ came the chorus
from younger family members.)
The real
turning point came when The Order of theWhite Boar was published, in 2017 – a year when, not only did I start travelling
to book events, but both my parents suffered major illnesses. And I realized
that, to be of any help to them, I had to have a car when staying.
So I set off
on my first long-distance solo drive. All of five hours in total – not much to
anyone used to distances in the USA or Australia, perhaps, but a virtual
marathon for me.
A choice of
two routes presented itself. Both led ultimately to the M25 orbital motorway
around London, which I dreaded, but I don’t think my selection was ever in
doubt. Why would I even consider taking the soulless M1 motorway when the
alternative A1 was available?
The A1 – also
known as the Great North Road. A name that has an undeniable, historical ring
to it. A road I had heard of in my extreme youth, before anyone in my family even
had a car (my dad was also a late-starting driver), the Great North Road’s
place in our national history is iconic. As former Northern Echo journalist Alen McFadzean says in his ‘Because
They’re There’ blog, ‘For many hundreds of years it’s been the main arterial
link between the capital cities of two countries – England and Scotland. It is
woven into history, folklore and legend. Dick Turpin galloped up it to his
death. The Gododdin rode down it to theirs. Bonnie Prince Charlie got part way
down, bottled out and turned back. The Leather Boys drove all the way up and
all the way down in one day from the Ace Cafe on the North Circular.’ (https://becausetheyrethere.com/2012/03/02/the-great-north-road-carved-by-feet-and-hooves/)
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| 'Withnail & I' |
The only similar event I can conjure for the M1 is the scene in Withnail & I where the main
characters, desperate to leave London, go on holiday in the north ‘by accident’
– and get there by hammering up the newly built M1 to the strains of ‘All Along
the Watchtower’.
Nowadays the
A1/GNR is a mixture of two-lane dual carriageway and occasional stretches of
four-lane motorway (A1(M)) and can be a frustrating experience when large
lorries clog up both lanes of the former. But I’ve discovered I enjoy the
variety of the drive and of switching from one type of driving to the other,
rather than the monotony of three/four-lane motorways, slicing monstrously
through often sterile-seeming landscapes.
One thing the
A1 isn’t is sterile. It must be horrific for those whose homes front on to its
thundering torrent of traffic, but as a driver on a long journey, I would far
rather mark my progress by way of the towns and villages and buildings passed
(and sometime by-passed). For many of those places have their own importance in
history – and driving through or very near them, that history is often recalled
to mind. As Alen McFadzean goes on to say, the road ‘was imprinted on the
landscape by people like us... Pilgrims, soldiers, peasants, vagabonds,
rebellious armies, drovers, geese, cattle, coaches, kings and clerics – in a
nutshell, humanity and its larder – passed along its length.’
Kings
certainly did. And one in particular with whom I’ve been much concerned of
late. (‘Oh no, not Richard III again.’) Richard will have travelled the Great
North Road many a time between court and Parliament at Westminster and his
homes in Yorkshire and other parts of the north. He will have journeyed along
it on his way to war with the Scots in 1482 – when he oversaw the surrender of
Edinburgh (at its northern end) and the border town of Berwick (which has
remained English to this day).
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| Now the Angel & Royal Inn, Grantham |
And he hurried south along its length from York
in the autumn of 1483, when his post-coronation royal progress was rudely
interrupted by the stirrings of rebellion further south. After a brief stay in
Lincoln, on 19 October he received the royal seal while staying at the Angel
Inn at Grantham – now bypassed by the A1 – and there signed the death warrant
of the Duke of Buckingham, figurehead of that failed revolt.
Name after
name recall events to my mind as I drive down that long road, and as I watch
the changing styles of buildings that I pass, and the changing colours of stone
and brick. But there’s always one that I look out for. Its coming is
foreshadowed by the first houses and inns in the local honey-coloured stone.
Past Stamford, past the RAF base at Wittering with its lurking Harrier jet, and
past the signs for Peterborough and Leicester (‘avoiding low bridges’). It’s
the turn-off for Fotheringhay, and all that remains of the castle where King
Richard was born in 1452. His parents lie in tombs in the beautiful church
there – reburied by their great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth I after their
original tombs were destroyed by her father during the Dissolution of the
monasteries – and a colourful stained-glass window commemorates Richard
himself.
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| Fotheringhay Church |
One further
commemoration – of a sort – exists there. Totally unplanned. I discovered it on
my first visit to Fotheringhay on my way down from the north. The turn-off from
the A1 is at a tiny place called Wansford. Is it just a coincidence that,
months before – before I even knew that place existed – I had given my main
protagonist the name Matthew Wansford? He was named after the first recorded
printer in the city of York – Frederick Wansford in the early 1500s, who makes
an appearance in my books as Matthew’s elder brother. Given the millions of
feet that must have tramped north and south on that Great Road, I guess it’s
entirely possible that the original Master Wansford – or his forebears – lived
in this small Northamptonshire village before making his way north to the
country’s second city to make his fortune in the exciting new book industry.
Alex is author of two books telling the story of the real King Richard III for children aged 10+, and editor of Grant Me the Carving of My Name, an anthology of short fiction inspired by the king, sold in support of Scoliosis Association UK (SAUK). A further anthology, Right Trusty and Well Beloved..., is planned for later this year and submissions are welcomed from published and unpublished authors. Details can be found at https://alexmarchantblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/call-for-submissions-to-new-richardiii-anthology/ Deadline 19 May 2019.
Alex's books can be found on Amazon at:
Comments
OK, I don't have your comprehensive knowledge of history and the various associations between events and locations, but it's more than that which divides us when it comes to appreciating the A1. The weekend before last, I drove from Aberdeen to Sunderland to spend what turned out to be an idyllic weekend with my 2 brothers in our Dad's city, watching his team beat our team in the wonderful Stadium of Light.
Living in Aberdeen necessarily involves long drives when visiting family and friends, most of whom are in Devon. My 3 (middle-aged) 'kids' and their kids are in Glasgow (3 hours), London and Brighton (an eternity). But I'm so grateful for the M6 and all the other Ms I take en route (even the M25). That awful crawl down the (2-way traffic) A1 last week was purgatory. Sorry.
The Great North Road is far better than Route 66! It was a Roman Road, Harald Godwinsson marched up it and -- my favourite -- the news of Elizabeth I's death was carried up it by a man riding post. The Royal Post had 'posts' at intervals all up the road, where a horse was kept saddled and bridled, day and night. Urgent news was carried by a rider who leaped from one horse and onto another every twenty miles. The news reached James VI of Scotland in three days -- he was now James One and Six, of England and Scotland.
I'd also like to have a route or map of the Old North Road, as the A1M has so many new stretches and by-passes that following the original route is not a simaple task.
One of Hitler's mistakes, I once heard, was in not bombing the bridge over the Don at Doncaster as this one crossing strike would have taken out road, rail and waterway routes all in one go. (This was also an explanation behind the dreadful city traffic jams, too.)
Do like your reading of the road too, Sue!
Interestingly, Susan, I believe the post-horse system from Scotland to London/Westminster that you mention was instituted by Richard when Duke of Gloucester, to take news from the war down to his brother Edward IV, when the latter didn't quite make it up their to lead his army himself. I use the first part of it in 'The King's Man', when my young characters need to travel swiftly after the battle of Bosworth....