GLC/DG/PUB/01/362

Thames Tunnel publication

Location	London Metropolitan Archives (see all files stored here)
File base	Fond GLC, subfond DG/PUB/01

This file is truly delightful. It is likely to bring a smile to your face, probably because it contains the sort of thing that makes trawling through dusty archive documents worthwhile. The thing in this file that makes your day might actually have nothing to do with its subject matter.

Context

Subfond DG/PUB/01 is made up of bundles of leaflets, seemingly grouped together at random. This one is listed under the title "Thames Tunnel Publication" and in it you'll find a leaflet describing the GLC's plans for a tunnel to carry Ringway 2 under the Thames at Gallions Reach. This much we knew, and there's little technical detail here, with it being a basic leaflet to be sent out to the public when the scheme was announced. This leaflet does have a neat diagram of the plan, though, including a plan of the proposed layout of Ringway 2's interchange with the Thamesmead Spine Road.

What's really nice, though, is that among the other publications in this file is a document titled A23/M23 Route Study, which appears to be a late 1970s or early 1980s report investigating ways in which the M23 could be completed without Ringway 2 in place. It investigates various options, but the general proposal seems to be a motorway or dual carriageway in as far as Mitcham Common, where it would terminate at a roundabout, from which two new single-carriageway roads would disperse traffic. One would go east to reach the A23; the line of this road matches the access road now known as Ampere Way that runs from the B272, past Ikea and on to the grade-separated junction on the A23 Purley Way. The other would have gone north west to a new junction with existing roads somewhere around Mitcham Junction.

This is a new document that I haven't seen before and it doesn't seem to appear in the LMA's catalogue listing, so it was quite an exciting file!

Links to other files

MT 152/419 M23 London to Crawley motorway: Mitcham to Hooley; public inquiry; inspector's documents; objections to the order to revoke the statutory authority for the route of M23 between Hooley and Mitcham (1978-1980)

People with camera copies

Chris Marshall has the full Thames Tunnel leaflet and the A23/M23 report.