Roads and Transport

Junction of A140 and Church Road, Tasburgh.

We now know for certain that the hill fort enclosure didn't have Roman origins but we can be equally sure that the A140 Ipswich Road follows the line of a Roman road. Known as the Pye Road, it ran south from the Roman town at Caister to their settlements at Scole and Coddenham, and then on to their capital at Colchester. The Romans were known not only for the straightness of their roads but also for the standard of their construction, so they would have built a raised causeway between the bottom of Tasburgh hill and the river, which was probably crossed with a bridge. However after the Romans departed, maintenance was neglected and that boggy section and the river crossing became known as the deep wade, giving its name to the local Saxon administrative area of Depwade Hundred. No doubt over the centuries a number of attempts would have been made to improve the situation but by 1758 things had got so bad that the local justices ordered a bridge to be built across the Hempnall stream. Unfortunately this attracted the anger of certain men who earned money helping to drag coaches and wagons clear of the mire, and they quickly pulled the bridge down, not once but twice.

Real improvements to the road had to wait for another ten years when it became a turnpike, and monies from the tolls, collected at the tollgate at the top of the hill from Newton Flotman, could be put to good use. However for some larger works the tolls proved insufficient, so in 1805 funds were raised by public subscription to pay for reducing the steepness of Tasburgh hill. 278 people with an interest in seeing quicker transport links between Norwich and London contributed to the cost, with the work being carried out the following year and traffic diverted via Fairstead Lane and Quaker Lane. The result can still be seen in the height of the banks on either side of the road which give an idea of just how steep the hill would originally have been.

As well as the mail coach, in 1826 there were three day coaches passing through Tasburgh on their way down to London, and the same number coming back. This later increased to five day coaches, and as they competed on the basis of time rather than comfort, it was inevitable that there would be accidents. One of them was reported in the London Standard in February 1843 in the following terms : -

On Thursday evening last, as the day coach from London was coming towards Tasburgh, when it reached the hill near the bridge which is surrounded by marshes, and consequently a very foggy atmosphere, the coach overtook a brewers dray, ran against the cart, and upset, turning over into a deep place by the side of the road. Mr Scott, of Newton Maid's Head, one of the outside passengers, was thrown off and fixed between the coach and a tree, which was cut down in order to extricate him. Mr Thomas Wiggins, the driver, was thrown off head first against a tree and much hurt. The guard, named Thomas, was also thrown head first against the stump of a tree, and killed on the spot, his head being laid completely open. The two inside passengers escaped unhurt, though very much frightened. We understand no blame can be attached to the coachman, the night being very dark and foggy, and the lights showing very little. The horses were very little hurt.

On another occasion, a coach turned too quickly into the yard of the Tasburgh Bird in Hand and overturned, killing the coachman, but all this was about to change. At the end of 1849 the Eastern Union Railway line from London to Norwich was completed, and within a year all horse drawn coach services had been withdrawn. However for centuries other trades such as a blacksmiths and a shop, as well as the Bird In Hand, had provided services to those using the road, and these together with the farms at the Fairstead Lane and Church Road junctions formed the nucleus of what in due course became Upper Tasburgh.

Just as the old Roman Road has been so influential in the location and development of the upper part of the village, so the river was the key factor in the existence of the lower part of the village. From the distribution pattern of the finds of worked flints it is clear that the Tas valley was settled long before other areas were cleared, and so the line of Low Road and Saxlingham Lane which broadly marks the boundary between the river's flood plain and slopes of the valley's side, is likely to reflect a track or way predating the arrival of the Romans by thousands of years.

In the 1800s, both Low Road and Saxlingham Lane were known singly as Lower Street, and before that property records refer to it as Nethergate or Nethergate Way, "nether" meaning low, as in The Netherlands or Low Countries, and "gate" or "gat" being the old English word for street, as in Norwich's Pottergate, Colegate, Bishopgate, etc. Stone and gravel for maintenance of the road would have come from the pit which now forms Burrfeld Park, as evidenced by the fact that the enclosure of the remaining common land in 1818 formally awarded the pit to the Surveyors of the Public Highways. Although the pit had been worked out by 1840 when it was being let to a market gardener, the village remained responsible for maintaining its roads until the Local Government Act of 1894 when the Depwade Rural District Council came into being.

Grove Lane and Church Hill, formerly known as Church Lane or School Hill, linking Low Road to Church Road came later, evidenced by the fact that both of them cut through the defensive ditch and bank of the hill fort; this is shown most clearly on Church Hill just below Old School House. Part of Grove Lane up to the Village Hall was sometimes referred to as Coal House Hill because the coal house, from which coal was distributed to the poor, was located on the roadside at the bottom of the playing field. Originally, part of Grove Lane carried straight on at the bottom of the hill, crossing in front of  Rookery House and joining Saxlingham Lane opposite Rookery Cottage. However in 1807 the owner of those properties, Mr Somers Clarke, purchased some additional land and diverted the road to follow its current alignment, so we can blame him for the dangerous double bends which were never designed for modern traffic.

A more recent realignment was made to Church Road in Upper Tasburgh. Although it is now known that the hill fort was definitely not Roman, the excavation of Roman tiles in the churchyard within the hill fort suggests that there may have been a building of some sort requiring a link to the current A140. Even if not, such a link would have been made by the Anglo Saxons living within the fortifications before they built the church from which the road now takes its name, but as late as 1901 the road was still known only as Upper Street. The Church Road and Ipswich Road junction was originally next to Barn Lodge to which the blocked off old road still gives access, but with the increase in traffic using the junction as a result of the new houses being built, it was first moved further north to improve visibility, and then subsequently enlarged to its current position.

Many of the road names for the housing developments reflect names of people who have featured in the more recent history of the village, some of whom are mentioned under the heading of People and Families. For example Harvey Close refers to Sir Charles Harvey of Rainthorpe Hall, Hastings Close refers to the Hastings family also of Rainthorpe, the Cursons and the Eversons farmed at Old Hall Farm, the Reverend Henry Preston was our longest serving rector and founder of the village school, several generations of the Lammas family have featured in village life since Edwin Lammas bought The Beeches in 1871, and there have been various branches of the Riches family living in Tasburgh for over two hundred years.