Much of the trendy road mirrors the trail of Watling Street, a serious Roman freeway linking the capital to the Kent coast.
Long earlier than the Romans arrived, a prehistoric trackway related the Kent coast with the Thames and past, serving as a significant hyperlink for the motion of products and folks throughout south-east England.
Roman engineering and Watling Street
After the Roman invasion in 43 CE, these historic pathways have been reworked by Roman engineers right into a paved road now referred to as Watling Street.
The development of this London part of Watling Street started across the winter of 47 to 48 CE, that includes a fastidiously compacted gravel core and layered surfacing made to assist heavy navy and business visitors.
The institution of Watling Street drastically improved the infrastructure, making journey and transportation extra environment friendly.
The new arterial route linked the ports of Dover and Richborough with Londinium (present-day London), extending to inland forts and cities, making Watling Street one of many spine roads of Roman Britain.
Medieval legacy and historic significance
For centuries after the Romans left, the legacy of Watling Street endured.
The path of the famend road continued to form the area’s frontiers and transport methods, even forming a part of the border of the Danelaw with Wessex and Mercia throughout the early medieval interval.
The fashionable A2 route
Today’s A2 to Dover is essentially a descendant of the Roman road, regardless of minor deviations brought on by the development of bypasses and flyovers.
The road begins from the Inner Ring Road alongside Old Kent Road, traverses by New Cross, Deptford, and Blackheath, earlier than weaving into fashionable grade-separated junctions at Shooters Hill and on in the direction of Dartford and the M25.
Archaeological discovery in Southwark
A considerable part of Roman road beneath the carriageway was uncovered throughout work on Southwark Council’s low-carbon warmth community in 2024, confirming that at the very least a portion of Watling Street lies immediately under the present A2 hall right here.
This discovery was the primary clear bodily proof that motorists on Old Kent Road are actually utilizing a 2,000-year-old route, somewhat than simply operating parallel to it.
An indication is about to be put in on a close-by railway bridge to mark the spot.
Hidden traces by south-east London
Moving into the suburbs, the Roman affect turns into extra mysterious, hidden behind bypasses, cul-de-sacs and procuring parades.
For occasion, across Blackheath, historic maps reveal that the unique road was much less straight in contrast to the tidy line seen right this moment, hinting on the pre-modern route.
In south-east London, historians notice that the A2 and Watling Street can solely be broadly equated, as in some sections reminiscent of Old Kent Road, the unique Roman line lay just a few hundred yards south.
Suburban evolution and engineering adjustments
As the road strikes east into Bexleyheath, it exposes the efforts of twentieth-century engineers to reconcile Roman directness with the evolving suburban panorama.
Here, the A2 splits into newer high-speed sections, whereas the older Broadway and native roads, retaining the Watling Street title, carry the historic line, now nestled between retailers, bus lanes and pelican crossings.
From heathland to highways
In locations like Dartford Heath, the twin carriageway A2 traverses landscapes acquainted to Roman travellers, albeit with the clatter of iron-shod wheels changed by the roar of lorries.
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Turnpikes and the Great Dover Road
By the 18th and nineteenth centuries, the outdated medieval route between London and the Channel underwent redesigning as turnpike trusts upgraded surfaces and gradients, branding the London-Dover trunk because the Great Dover Road.
Later absorbed into the numbered road system because the A2, this historic teaching route solidified the A2’s longstanding position as the first land route from the town to the continent-facing ports.
A road by time
Drivers and bus passengers accustomed to the A2 right this moment is probably not conscious that their route is a time-machine diagram in tarmac: an amalgamation of prehistoric tracks, Roman imperial arteries, medieval pilgrimage methods, teaching roads, turnpikes, and twin carriageways.
Every journey alongside Old Kent Road, New Cross, and even the A2 previous Dartford, means traipsing a hall folks have been travelling for practically two millennia.
As a time capsule carrying the weights of historical past, the A2 not solely hyperlinks the capital to the Kent coast but in addition connects the current with centuries of human historical past, the echoes of that are felt in each journey made alongside the road.
