A6 road (England)
This article is about the A6 road in England. For other roads of the same name, and all other uses, go to the A6 (disambiguation page).
The A6 is a major road in England. It runs from Luton in Bedfordshire to Carlisle in Cumbria.
Running north west from Luton, the road travels through Bedford, bypasses both Kettering and Market Harborough, continues through Leicester, Loughborough, Derby and Matlock before going through the Peak District to Bakewell, Buxton, Stockport, Manchester, Chorley, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal and Penrith before reaching Carlisle.
South of Nottingham, the road is parallelled by the M1 motorway, and north of Manchester the M6 motorway approximates its course.
North of Luton, the one-mile £9.4m dual-carriageway Barton in the Clay Bypass was opened in December 1990. The one-mile £2m Silsoe Bypass opened in February 1981. The one-mile £3m Elstow Bypass opened in early 1983. North of Bedford, the three-mile £26m dual-carriageway Clapham Bypass opened on December 12th 2002, named the Paula Radcliffe Way, after the marathon runner who went to school at nearby Sharnbrook. South of Kettering, the three-mile £10m part-dual-carriageway Rushden & Higham Ferrers Bypass opened on August 14th 2003, where the road meets the A45. The road still goes through Finedon, and the two-mile £2.6m Burton Latimer Bypass opened in October 1991. Weetabix is based near here. Kettering was bypassed when sections of the east-west corridor A14 were built. The five-mile £11.4m Rothwell-Desborough Bypass opened on August 14th 2003. The five-mile £9.5m Market Harborough Bypass was opened in June 1992. The three-mile dual-carriageway Great Glen Bypass opened on February 19th 2003, though operated as a dual-carriageway only after April 4th 2003.
At Leicester, it is subsumed into Leicester's inner ring-road, the A594. Before this, it went via Charles Street, and before then, down Granby Street and Gallowtree Gate.
North of Leicester, the four-mile £43.3m dual-carriageway Quorn-Mountsorrel Bypass opened in October 1991. From here the road goes through Loughborough and joins the M1 at a busy roundabout, which is where the A50 Derby-Stoke Link begins. The three-laned A6 multiplexes with the A50 for a couple of miles, and the next section, the A6 Spur, was opened with the A50 in 1997. The £10.6m dual-carriageway Alvaston Bypass/Improvement opened on 17th December 2003. The road goes through Derby, then follows the Derwent Valley through Duffield and Belper, where the road goes past a large mill, formerly owned by Richard Arkwright, and now a museum. There is also a large Morrisons supermarket here. Matlock Bath is a mecca for motorbikers, and many use the A6 for pleasure and speed.
From Buxton, the road goes to Stockport. The four-mile £38m part-dual-carriageway Chapel-en-le-Frith & Whaley Bridge Bypass opened in August 1987. There were plans in the 1970s for a bypass around Stockport, by a motorway, the A6(M), which never was given the go-ahead, although many construction schemes were designed. Due to build up of traffic in the Stockport area, the same scheme is now going to be built as the A555, to link up east of Stockport with the M60.
- Former route in the south
The route of the A6 south of Luton is now the A1081 for most of its length. In the initial road numbering scheme, the A6 started in Barnet where it joined what was then the A1 Great North Road. From Barnet the road went to London Colney, St. Albans, Harpenden to join the current start of the road at Luton. At St. Albans, the road met the then A5 at a crossroads: going north on both roads, the A5 arriving from the southwest, and leaving the crossroads northwest, and the A6 arriving from the southeast and leaving to the north east. Nowadays that stretch of the A5 has also been renumbered so that the crossroads in St. Albans in now A5183 and A1081. Nonetheless it is still a busy crossroads but would presumably be busier if the roads had retained their earlier identities.
See also
- A6 murder - the August 1961 murder of Michael Gregsten at a lay-by on the A6 in Bedfordshire, and the controversial trial and execution of James Hanratty for the crime.