Perhaps the most important development in 20th Century Fareham, Eastern Way takes the A27 out of the town centre (or half of it at least - the other half is provided by Western Way). True pedants will be keen to point out that Eastern Way is actually shared between the A27 and the A32 throughout, and while that is correct, the A32 becomes almost marginalised around Fareham town centre, and barely gets a look in. The entire road opened as a primary route but was downgraded shortly afterwards.
The road was opened in 1971 and referred to in planning documents as the Fareham Southern Bypass or Eastern Link, its main purpose being to cut the corner between Gosport Road and Cams Hill. The original layout was a large roundabout which utilised the railway viaduct, this was then shifted northwards slightly when Western Way was added. At this point the buildings in the middle were knocked down and trees were planted, which were then removed in 2011.
Subsequent roadworks have masked just how sharp the road turned in order to meet it at the roundabout.
In June 1986, a southbound filter lane and the strange single lane flyover were built in an attempt to take the pressure off the roundabout, requiring a building to be knocked down. At the time this opened, the official press release acknowledged that the flyover was a budgeted solution which would not solve all the problems, and that eventually the junction would have to be redesigned again - ideally when the Portland Street area was demolished.
The project cost £1.5m. Eastern Way westbound was widened at the same time, despite being only 10 years old, a clear sign that the scale of the Gosport problem had been under-estimated. Before it was built the roundabout was much bigger, and ran under the railway arches and around a yard.
Obviously the advice on replacing the flyover fell on death ears, but in truth the problem never was getting to or from the station. The flyover was part of a package of improvements which were all about trying to make it easier to get out of Gosport, which is where the majority of traffic was (and still is) coming from.
Having cleared the vortex that is the Quay Street Roundabout, the dual carriageway heads east through what was mostly privately-owned fields, before crossing Bath Lane, demolishing about eight houses in the process. Splitting up Bath Lane meant that alternative access was needed for what became Lower Bath Lane, and this was provided via one of Eastern Way's new slip roads, using reclaimed land.
From the Bath Lane subway (where a precarious footpath joins us), more gardens were taken up, although four properties (located on The Esplanade, the predecessor to Deanes Park Road) were lost at the Delme junction.
The Delme flyover was retrofitted in June 1985, at a cost of £2.8m. It is a 140m long, three-span, post-tensioned concrete bridge. Before it, the two carriageways simply pulled apart, and dropped down steeply to form the slip roads. It was another one in the Gosport improvements package.
Tap these photos to enlarge them.
J11 Spur and Pinks Hill
Eastern Way is only short, and officially it ends here, but since we're here and the next road has no name we might as well continue.
The road up to J11 was opened in 1976 as part of the motorway contract, which is reflected in its better build standard. From the flyover, it climbs steeply up the hill on which Fort Wallington was built, as a result of this, the slip roads are extraordinarily long as they struggle to rise up to the road and make the climb at the same time.
The road cuts across the path of Pinks Hill, which means it now meets Pinks Hill at a dodgy angle that risks a few different types of accident. That's because Pinks Hill used to start on Wallington Shore Road, and for a short while between 1971 and 1976, it had its own exit from the Delme Roundabout, right next to the railway bridge.
Pinks Hill itself is an odd road. It was built by the military to serve Fort Wallington, which was built in 1874 amid fears of a possible war with France. The new road was called Wallington Military Road and went up the hill, meeting the link to Wallington Drift Road (which is now called 'Military Road', confusingly), and then headed east towards the other forts along Portsdown Hill Road.
On the east side of Pinks Hill, the road is hemmed in by what appears to be a short concrete wall. This was a World War II pill box: a small fort with an entrance in the undergrowth and a window at the front. It is of the very rare 'Type 25' (model "FW3/25"), and is the only remaining pill box in the Portsdown area.
After the war, Wallington Military Road remained narrow but was a popular shortcut to head east along Portsdown Hill Road while avoiding the traffic in Portchester. On 16 December 1957, the army declared that the road was permanently closed. Barriers were placed at each end, which were soon vandalised. Pedestrians were allowed to use it from January 1958, but still not vehicles.
In May 1958, members of the Society for the Suppression of Bureaucracy tore down the barriers, and declared the road open. Fareham Urban District Council agreed to purchase the road from the War Office for £100 in December 1958 and open it up to the public, but this hinged on an argument over the poor condition and alignment of the road, which is why Hampshire County Council were unwilling to take it on. By May 1959, the road was still closed.
Fort Wallington was sold by the Crown in April 1961 for £12,500, to create a new industrial estate, by which point Wallington Military Road had reopened to the public. It was still using this title in 1971, before becoming 'Pinks Hill'.
The remains of the fort were further damaged in 1971, when work on the new roads started, before it became a protected building in 1976. Pinks Hill then entered a new era as a semi-unofficial and very narrow link road to the industrial estates. It is still marked as a private road, with an unusual maintenance regime, which befits its unusual backstory.
With the never-ending plans for new housing estates, it's possible that Pinks Hill will eventually get properly rebuilt; the fields have been the subject of numerous planning proposals since the 1970s, including a plan for a hotel. The pill box may make any widening difficult.
Beyond all this, Eastern Way continues to rise and curves north, carving up the original Military Road in the process. The middle section of Military Road is now only accessible locally via Paradise Lane, as it has been totally isolated, but as it's a small lane through fields it doesn't have much that would be inconvenienced by this. The tiny width of this lane, and especially the part down the hill, gives some idea what these military roads would have been like before the council bought them.
By the time Eastern Way reaches the roundabout known as the Wallington Interchange, the road is at a considerable height above the M27, leaving the motorway in a deep cutting, spoil from which was used to build J12 and the M275, which both encroach on seawater. The size of the cutting which the roundabout is built on is phenomenal: you can't really appreciate it under all the trees which have been planted, but instead you have to look at the top of the hill and imagine the line continuing across.
If you have grown up with pieces of infrastructure like this, it's easy to forget just how big this engineering project was for a small town like Fareham. For a good chunk of its length (along the lay-bys), the link road is the exact same cross-section as the M27, with the same design speeds.
This does beg the question: what did Fareham do to deserve so much access? Some people have hypothesised that it was meant to be the start of something bigger (like the fabled "M274" that was actually reserved for Paulsgrove). The truth is it was actually just trying to anticipate a future need: they knew that everybody to the south and west of Fareham would be trying to head this way, so they wanted it to be able to cope, even if they didn't have any specific purposes in mind after all.
It was also relatively cheap to build, because it was only a tiny fraction of the motorway build cost, and the two junctions at Delme and Wallington were both kept very simple to avoid any really complicated engineering.
These days, the idea of fast flowing traffic isn't appreciated by highway engineers, so it would be surprising if traffic lights aren't placed all along the road sooner or later. This would make it easier to sell the land along it to housing developers without the developer having to pay for any new engineering. How times change.
The Route of the Motorway
This seems like an appropriate place to discuss the route of Fareham's bypass, which J11 owes its very existence to.
Initial talk about improving the South Coast Trunk Road in the 1930s noted that there needed to be a new road around Fareham, and that it would be easier to build if it passed to the north.
When that scheme grew to become the M27 Southampton - Chichester motorway, there was no need to be loyal to the existing setup, and the idea of running it to the south of Fareham became tempting. Gosport Council wanted the motorway to run north of Titchfield and Stubbington, south of Hoeford, and then south of Portchester along the coastline and over the mud flats, saying this would alleviate their traffic problems. Portsmouth City Council wanted most of that route, but suggested it go around Portchester to the north instead. Fareham Urban District Council had voted 13-8 in favour of it going north of the town (which is what was built) were happy with the built route north of the town, and Hampshire were firmly in favour of the northern route.
The drawn swords over the two routes hindered the project, and an independent study began by stopping motorists on the existing A27 and asking them where they were going. The study concluded that while the southern route would be better for traffic, it wouldn't justify the extra millions (the exact figure was £1m extra, plus any engineering difficulties considering the route, and any compensation paid to the shipping industry as some of Portsmouth Harbour would have been cut off), and both plans would require Gosport Road to be tripled in width before it to actually help Gosport. There was also some consideration needed as to what the point of the M27 was actually for (and perhaps enough thought wasn't given to that): was it supposed to be helping suburbanites get to work, or was it supposed to be carrying freight across the country? Inevitably, the authorities wanted it to do everything.
The study suggested the best solution would be the northern route (as built), with an additional bridge to be built between Gosport and Portsmouth. This was much relief to people in Portchester, who feared the southern route would have carved their village. Comment had also been made that the southern route could have reduced the effects of coastal erosion, and been a chance to control the tidal flooding in Fareham.
The confirmed route was then protected from development, and only temporary buildings were allowed to be built on it, while the rest of Paulsgrove was developed around it.
Finally, despite popular rumour, the M27 was never meant to go to Lands End, or Bournemouth, or Kent, or Brighton. Even when it was being built, newspapers, politicians and angry locals would often get confused about what was going to be M27, what would be A27 and what would be A31. Today people quote those misunderstandings as fact. What is a fact is that only the road from Cadnam to Chichester was ever going to be the M27, and it never even made it that far.
Studies as early as 1989 concluded that the M27 would soon need an extra lane between Portsmouth and Southampton, due to the rate that the suburbs had expanded. A detailed study by Travers Morgan in 1991 reached the same conclusion.
The concept then got stuck in the usual political carousel, being watered down to just a bit of widening on the uphill sections near Paulsgrove, which happened in 2008. While that was being drawn up, more detailed plans were raised to install 'part-time hard shoulder running' between J4 and J11; that then got watered down to just 'variable speed limits', which then got promoted to 'all lane running' between J3 and J12, which then had the most useful parts taken away and became an all-lane running project between J4 and J11, which was outsourced to the lowest bidder and eventually opened months late in the middle of 2022, as one of the last schemes of this type to be allowed to open before the government ban on them took effect.
While Highways England (or whatever they're called now) were keen to call this "a once in a generation upgrade", they did leave out the necessary resurfacing, drainage upgrades, a lot of the barrier replacement, the signage review and the installation of many safety areas, all of which will have to be retrofitted soon and at great expense.