The A2070 - Original Web Page

[Transcript from original web page. Last updated August 2023]

Known to most locals as the 'A twenty seventy', the A2070 spans just over thirteen miles in Southeast Kent, from Brenzett to Kennington (a northern suburb of Ashford). 

Originally, a mere 'B' road, running from Ashford town centre to the small Romney Marsh town of New Romney, the road was re-classified in the seventies, with the route being switched to end in the tiny village of Brenzett. Then, with the onset of the Channel Tunnel and Ashford's burgeoning growth, spurred on by the international station, the whole route was rebuilt in the early nineties and it is now part of the South Coast Trunk Route. 

The '2070' is perhaps the only road in the UK to have been a B road, an A road, a primary route and a trunk road whilst maintaining the same number. In transport terms, a real 'rags to riches' story and there's even a video here.

1) Hamstreet Bypass

0m Leaving the A259 at Brenzett (approx. half way between Hastings and Folkestone), the road streaks northwards across the completely flat Romney Marsh (famed for its sheep), with only an avenue of poplar trees for company. Brenzett used to be signed as the main destination on the A2070 from Ashford in spite of its small size, but most of the signs now say 'Hastings'. However, as yet, signs on the A259 from Hastings haven't been updated to include the trunk destination of Ashford. Facilities at Brenzett include a filling station, a school and an aeronautical museum. Sadly the Fleur de Lis pub and village post office have bitten the dust.

2m Snave. After the staggered junction with roads from Brenzett Green and Ivychurch (both former incarnations of the '2070'), we pass the hamlet of Snave with our first long straight. St Augustine's church, to the right, has one service annually at harvest festival. Mischievous youths regularly alter the signs to read 'Shave.'

3m Stockbridge. It is hard to believe that at this point traffic used to grind to a halt at the Wey Street T-junction to pass single-file over a ditch. 

4m Hamstreet South (Johnson's Corner). Johnson was a heroic pilot who lost his life in the Second World War. His plane was in trouble as he returned from crossing the Channel; his crew had to bail out but he tragically lost his life at this spot.

Here the old road exits right for Hamstreet. This is a large village compared to most in this area. Hamstreet has a church which was formerly a chapel, as well as a range of shops and services, a railway station, public house (Duke's Head), Indian restaurant, fish and chip shop, cafe, garage, school, surgery and dentist. The village makes a great base for walkers wishing to explore the three long distance footpaths; the Saxon Shore Way, the Greensand Way and the Royal Military Canal Path. The village is famous for its appearance in map-form on a set of postage stamps marking the bicentenery of the Ordnance Survey.

4.5m The canal forms the boundary of the marshes and runs from Seabrook (near Folkestone) to Cliff End (beyond Rye). It owes its existance purely to the threat of invasion from Napoleon. The double bends every 600 yards would have been manned as lookouts.

The bypass was constructed on giant polystyrene blocks to bridge the canal because the ground here is unusually soft. This was the first time this technique was used in the UK, being more usually used to contruct roads over ice-fields in Alaska. Our road streaks straight ahead to climb the ridge of clay hills, with views of Warehorne church to the left and Hamstreet to the right.

5.5m Hamstreet North (Orlestone). The hamlet of Orlestone was the original centre of population here and is the location of the parish church. It wasn't until the damp Romney Marshes were drained that the populace decamped to low-lying Hamstreet, originally known as plain 'Ham'.

There is an exit here to rejoin the old road which continues via Bromley Green and Kingsnorth.

The new road climbs up through the expansive woodlands (well worth a visit), and joins the Hastings to Ashford railway line to the right, running dead-straight for several miles. The four bridges over the road between here and the Southern Orbital junction were designed to blend in with the 1850s brick structures across the railway.

As we traverse more flat, open agricultural land, it is also worth noting that this line is one of only two diesel lines in the provincial Southeast. 

9m Park Farm Estate. The A2070 used to have a clear run from Hamstreet to Ashford, but a roundabout was added in 2006 to accommodate traffic from various new housing projects. Park Farm is a large modern housing estate with a school, a supermarket and a little square not far from the roundabout with a convenience store. However, there is no pub and the long-promised rail halt has never materialised.

Nearby Kingsnorth still just about maintains a village feel, being separated from the burgeoning metropolis by a small ‘green belt'. The village includes a church, a school, a pub (Queen's Head), a motorbike shop and a reunion with the Greensand Way. 

The A2070 continues for another mile in dead straight form, squeezed between the housing estate and the railway line. As it nears the roundabout, the road enters a 50 limit and one encounters a set of traffic lights, to enable cyclists to cross the road from Park Farm to use the path towards the town centre.

2) Ashford South Orbital Road

9.5m Having reached the main Park Farm roundabout, the A2070 then passes beneath Southern Orbital Road to spiral up sharply onto this dual carriageway section, where the national speed limit resumes but by the time you reach 70 mph you’re back into a 50 zone and then a 40.

Meanwhile, the A2042 kindly provides the main route to Ashford town centre, which includes the tented 'designer outlet' and an international station where one could board a 186-mph Eurostar train bound for Paris or Brussels until services were put into limbo thanks to COVID (apparently). The town centre is largely traffic free and the area around the tall parish church of St Mary's still maintains a quaint peacefulness. Ashford has a long history as a railway town, but the works sadly closed in the nineties.

  

10.5m Finberry / Waterbrook. There was originally a roundabout to serve the truck-stop here. This was removed in 2022, being replaced by traffic lights. As we near the junction there is a turning southward to serve the new Finberry Estate. At the junction itself, which is the widest part of the entire A2070, the southern exit leads to a 'lorries only' service area, and the northern exit leads to the relocated Ashford market (bright thinking, sticking it two miles out of town!), as well as business parks consisting largely of car showrooms and a McDonald's which was reported as being the second busiest branch in the world in the early 2020s (yes, seriously).

11m Sevington. Marooned to the right of the speeding traffic, one can make out the spire of Sevington church now surrounded by a huge lorry park where there were once open fields - a consequence of Brexit that leavers rarely boast about! To the left is another business park and the Highfield housing estate. There is another roundabout with a dual carriageway link (also numbered A2070) to junction 10A of the M20, shaving off a corner for coastbound traffic. This was opened in autumn 2019.

11.5m Junction 10. We enter a 40 limit to approach the Lacton Interchange, known to many as the ‘roundabout from hell.' More mild-mannered types merely know it as 'M20 junction 10.' This is the point at which the A2070 ceases to be a trunk road or primary route.

3) Willesborough to Kennington

This final section is the re-designated B2164. Its character is much different from the rest of the road, being a mostly unimproved suburban route, complete with 30mph speed limit. A mini roundabout forms the junction for the William Harvey Hospital. We descend through Willesborough Lees, and crossing the River Stour, we pass Conningbrook Lake (worth a visit), the Bachelors soup factory and the Julie Rose Athletics Stadium.

13m Little Burton Farm. Having crossed the Ashford-Canterbury railway line, one is plunged into suburbia once again. The era of an unbroken view to the North Downs is now history.

13.5m Having bridged the Ashford-Canterbury railway line via parallel humpback bridges, we pass Little Burton estate on the left as we traverse the final half-mile straight to the end of the road. At the roundabout we meet the A28 - another noteworthy route, for it encompasses 58 miles from just north of Hastings to Margate, via Tenterden, Ashford and Canterbury.

Why the A2070?

With Lydd airport being considered for expansion, we may eventually see the B2075 upgraded. If this becomes a southern extension of the A2070 via a multiplex with the A259 through Old Romney, the road would gain another 7 miles. Being really optimistic, we may even see the Lydd branch railway line reopen too.

Many drivers enjoy the Hamstreet bypass section purely because of their desire for speed, hence regular speed-traps are now a feature. The South Orbital section originally formed the boundary of urban Ashford but this is no longer the case. All in all, the road illustrates all that is good and bad about Kent in a mere 13.5 miles. It has improved travel, but it has meant the loss of some rural businesses as well as having a worryingly high accident record.

A2070 Picture Gallery

The South Coast Trunk Road (Part II)

[Last updated January 2020]

Last time I left you stranded near Pevensey in East Sussex. This month we complete the South Coast Trunk Road narrative (purloined from a withdrawn web page of mine) with a large portion of A259.

Nicknamed as the ‘world’s worst trunk road’ by some, this road is of a reasonable standard to begin with, being a long, tree-lined straight (actually some of the gentlest curves imaginable). It then bears smoothly right and climbs, suddenly winding back and forth at the top, before slowing right down to enter unbanity (or ur-banality) for the next ten miles, beginning with Little Common. There is a 30 limit for much of this section.

Bexhill (apparently the home of British motor racing) presents us with one roundabout and a box junction where the A2690 uses a former railway trackbed to bypass the suburbs to reach the A21. Personally I think it would be better utilised by number it as an extension to the A28 as a signed route to Ashford, avoiding the urbanity that is follow on the A259.

So, back to the A259, there is a brief rat-race climb, where the road briefly flirts with dual carriageway around the back of the town centre, quirklily named King Offa Way. Then it plunges back into urbanity with a long, slow straight all the way to the out-of-town entertainment complex that marks the border with Hastings.

After Bulverhythe, the road passes under the railway bridge and finds its way to the sea, running along the promenade of St Leonards, all the way to Hastings, where the greensand escarpment above the old town is ever prominent, crowned with its castle. Apart from Dymchurch and Sandgate on the now-detrunked part of the A259 (Kent), this is the only point that the South Coast route truly hugs the coast.

At the centre of the ‘birthplace of television’, you will pass the pier and fun fair to your right. This epithet is due to John Logie Baird once residing in the town. I have heard that notable births in Hastings include Suggs (of the band Madness) and funny person, Jo Brand.

Beyond a completely pointless roundabout, you will pass the old, black, wooden fishing sheds. The A259 then dives inland for a sustained climb of almost a mile through the suburban housing, to Ore. Trumped ambitiously as ‘Ore Village’, the road forms the main shop-lined street here, and a short climb later, it presents the motorist with breath-taking views before its steep descent.

There used to a crawler lane all the way up the hill for traffic coming the opposite way. This has been shortened in recent years – maybe an attempt at traffic calming!

Beyond Guestling, the road narrows, then winds, then narrows some more, and regains its confidence for a mile or so before Icklesham, which has a windmill. The road regains momentum again beyond this pleasant village, with an impressive descent followed by the resulting climb to Winchelsea – Britain’s oldest ‘new town’, laid out in a grid pattern in the 13th century – well worth a visit and often quoted as ‘England’s smallest town’. Spike Milligan is buried in the churchyard, with 'I told you I was ill' in Gaelic etched on his stone (the same phrase in Engish being deemed too irreverent!).

The A259 has no such interest, and passing one of the three stone archways, it drops steeply down the wooded hillside with a sudden hairpin-bend at the bottom. After a bumpy ‘risk of grounding’ undulation, it uses straight lines along the banks of the Royal Military Canal to plot its narrow route across the marshes to Rye, a larger town which successfully contorts the A259 by 180 degrees to cross the River Tillingham, before hiding it away between the southern undercliff and its Victorian terraces. The Rye town model in the tourist office is a fascinating glimpse of the town's history.

After another mini-roundabout and a narrow bridge over the River Rother, the road streaks purposefully in a dead-straight line out onto the vast expanses of Romney Marsh – totally flat, pastoral, grazing land which remains so for the next 13 miles of our route. This speedy beginning is deceptive - at East Guldeford there's a chicane between two level crossings, and two right-angle bends follow, first right and then left, where we cross the border into Kent.

The Cheyne Court wind-farm is ever present here. After two more right-angle bends, the A259 remembers that it is a trunk road, widening and straightening out, through-passing Brookland with a 50 limit and roundabout. It used to run through the pretty High Street, sadly now devoid of basic amenities, however Brookland's church is worth a visit as its steeple is on the ground! You will barely notice the level crossing as you speed towards Brenzett – the transport hub of the marsh.

The next section is a real ‘rags to riches’ story. From the 2070’s humble beginnings as a B road from New Romney to Ashford, it has now usurped the Brenzett to Folkestone section of the A259, which has been detrunked, due to being a predominantly urban crawl through a series of coastal towns and villages.

The new route is a top-grade single carriageway to Ashford. The road has even been recommended for speed trails by motorcycle magazines – not advised! The terrain is completely flat, passing the hamlet of Snave towards the gently curving section that climbs the clay hills around Hamstreet – worth a detour for its typically Kentish weather-board buildings, and once featured on a set of UK postage stamps. We cross the Royal Military Canal again as we climb onto the ridge of clay hills. The canal was built as a barrier against a feared attack from Napoleon and is the UK's third longest defensive structure.

Beyond this village, the road is almost motorway-like, although still a single carriageway, with five bridges and only one further junction. It climbs through forest which was once part of the great forest of Anderida which covered the whole of the Weald. The picture at the top of the page is of this section. Our road then follows the railway line dead-straight across flat farmland until the roundabout serving the sprawling southern estates of Ashford.

A mile later, the A2070 reaches another roundabout and enters a brief 50 limit, to spiral up sharply onto the dual carriageway Southern Orbital road. This is now the land of business parks, and it is due to become much more urbanised as time goes on, with the proposed expansion of Ashford. Within two miles, you will cross another two roundabouts, taking the dual carriageway to junction 10A on the M20 which opened in 2019 which is where our trunk route ends, as the M20 steals its thunder towards Folkestone and Dover. It's been emotional!

The South Coast route as described is no longer used as a general east-west route, with most patrons opting for the M20, M26, M25 and a suitable conduit southward (M23/A3/M3/A303). Although efforts have been made to improve some parts of this road (Brighton bypass/Polegate bypass/Hamstreet bypass), it is hoped by many locals that no full-scale upgrade of the entire route occurs. In the interest of the countryside that remains along this varied route, they may just have a point.