MT 106/282

Proposed construction: Lea Valley Road; protection of Radial Route 6 Temple Mills to `D' Ring Road; land charge enquiries

Date range	1964-1971
Location	National Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue	See entry
File base	Series MT, subseries MT 106

Context

Radial Route 6 was one of Abercrombie's proposals in the Greater London Plan of 1944, and would have seen a new road built up the Lea Valley from Stratford towards Waltham Abbey, with the intention that it would continue towards Cambridge and replace the existing A11. This proposal developed into the M11 before the line of the motorway was moved east to follow the Roding Valley instead, at which point the future of RR6 became uncertain. This is effectively the "what shall we do with Radial Route 6" file.

Initially RR6 was handed to the GLC, who continued to protect its line as a potential future secondary road, but it became quickly clear that it wouldn't relieve other main roads of enough traffic to avoid the need to improve the other main roads as well, and therefore it would be cheaper to just upgrade existing main roads and not build RR6 at all.

Contents of note

• Documents describing the planned Lea Valley Regional Park, where the initial plan included space for RR6 to be built.
• GLC deliberations on whether to continue safeguarding RR6, within which is the observation that the only part with clear justification in traffic terms was the length between A503 and Temple Mills. Lo: this was eventually built as Orient Way.
• Three large plan sheets showing RR6-as-M11, circa 1966 but undated, from somewhere near Enfield down to about Temple Mills, with junction layouts.
• Two plan sheets of something the GLC evidently proposed to build called a "sludge main". I have no wish to discover whether this exists or what runs through it or, indeed, anything else whatsoever about it. I do not want a "sludge main" to be a thing I know anything about, thank you.

People with camera copies

Chris Marshall has a partial copy.