MT 95/84

Ring road 'D'

Date range	1949-1962
Location	National Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue	See entry
File base	Series MT, subseries MT 95

Context

The file title here is a little vague, and in fact this file is entirely concerned with the section of the D-Ring that got closest to construction in its original form, which is the part that lies between the A30 and A41. This section was in Middlesex County Council's patch, and the file is almost entirely made up of correspondence between MCC and the Ministry about this troublesome bit of road.

One particularly interesting insight is that the one part that did get built at the time - the section from Feltham to Hayes, was not the work of either the Ministry or MCC - both of whom were too busy squabbling about where the road should go and who should pay for it - but was actually provided by the Ministry of Aviation as a replacement for the roads that were removed to make way for the expansion of Heathrow in the early 1950s.

Among the dull stuff - a tender document for a section of what is now the A312 near Feltham, or a very long list of traffic census data and houses near the proposed D-Ring, there is some useful stuff, outlined below.

Contents of note

• When the Ministry of Aviation came to hand the new D-Ring back, and get their promised contribution towards its costs, MCC refused to pay up on the grounds that it was about to be trunked. This was against contemporary practice, which was that whoever took the road on would pay for it no matter how long (or how little time) they expected to look after it. There was much disgruntled muttering from the MoT about this departure from accepted protocol.
• Correspondence with MCC, dated February 1957, in which they request that the D-Ring's unbuilt northwestern section is taken on by the Ministry as a trunk road project. The Ministry sees through this immediately - Middlesex had spent five years trying to come up with a line for the road between Western Avenue and the elusive Aylesbury Radial (Northolt to South Oxhey, the very same section that stymied planners of Ringway 3) to no avail, and were simply trying to wash their hands of the whole messy business by pushing it over to the MoT. Clearly the Ministry were (despite their huffing and puffing) a bit of a pushover in this regard, because they took it without much argument, and spent the next fifteen years wrestling with it themselves. How they fared is detailed in MT 106/118.

Links to other files

MT 106/118 Highway projects: Ringway 3(M16); Yeading to South Mimms (1959-1964)

People with camera copies

None known.