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Location: A3, London, England, United Kingdom.
West Hill:
The A3, known as the Portsmouth Road in sections, is a major road connecting London and Portsmouth passing close to Kingston upon Thames, Guildford, Haslemere and Petersfield. For much of its 67-mile (108 km) length, it is classified as a trunk road and therefore managed by the Highways Agency. Almost all of the road has been built to dual carriageway standards. Apart from brief sections in London the road travels from that city SW and, after Liss, SSW.
Close to its southerly end, traffic for Portsmouth is routed via the A3(M), A27 and M275 — the A3 becomes a single carriageway through some south Hampshire settlements (as exceptionally through Battersea, Clapham and Stockwell towards the northern end).
History of West Hill:
The historic Portsmouth Road once had great strategic significance as the major link between the capital city and what became the settled main port of the Royal Navy as well as a non-military port. Many of the towns and villages that it passed through gained income and prestige as a result — such as Kingston upon Thames, Esher, Guildford, Godalming, Haslemere and Petersfield. The modern A3 follows the general route of the Portsmouth Road, but bypasses many of the towns and villages along the way, leaving the various stretches of the old Portsmouth Road for local traffic — for instance, the A307, its original course through Kingston-upon-Thames and Esher is also known as the Portsmouth Road.
A programme of road improvements starting in the 1920s transformed the road so that is now predominantly a two or three lane carriageway, bypassing the town centres, south of the South Downs National Park it includes a section of motorway, the A3(M), just before the road reaches the A27 at Havant. The construction of the Kingston and Guildford bypasses in the 1920s and 1930s made use of temporary narrow gauge railways to move the construction materials. The Esher bypass, between Hook from the first mentioned bypass to the M25, is three lanes with a motorway-standard hard shoulder; from here to Guildford the road has three lanes.
Government proposed the Kingston By-pass in 1912 but, with the onset of World War I, plans were shelved. By the early 1920s, traffic in Kingston town centre had increased by over 160% in 10 years in the coaching town and the decision was taken to revive the plans. Work finally started in 1924 on what was to become one of the first arterial roads in Britain. It was opened by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Stanley Baldwin MP, on 28 October 1927. It ran for 8.5 miles (13.7 km) from the Robin Hood Gate of Richmond Park to the near outskirts of Esher. The opening ceremony concluded with refreshments for 800 guests in marquees near what is now the Merton fly-over (off this the Merton Spur travels 1 mile (1.6 km), finishing close to Wimbledon Chase railway station).
The construction of the Kingston By-pass immediately attracted developments of housing where access was easiest. The Restriction of Ribbon Development Act 1935 came too late to prevent this private housing, which is apparent where the A3 winds through Tolworth and New Malden where the architecture includes concrete to art nouveau apartments[n 1], Mock-Tudor gabled houses and gabled Arts and Crafts movement-inspired houses.
The road was once the haunt of highwaymen, for example, the legendary Jerry Abershawe terrorised the area around Kingston and led a gang based at the Bald Faced Stag Inn on the Portsmouth Road. Another particularly dangerous location was in the vicinity of the wooded crest skirting the Devil's Punch Bowl, Hindhead, about 8 miles (13 km) south-west of Guildford.
In 2011 the Hindhead Tunnel became the centre of the Hindhead Bypass around the winding road of the small town, which provided the only urban set of traffic lights outside of London and so a bottleneck. Until 2011 the road through Hindhead was the last single carriageway section of the route, outside of London and Portsmouth.
