History
The route now called the A66 was once 'the winter road' from Scotch Corner to Glasgow, by way of Carlisle. 'The summer road' runs from Barnard Castle, along Teesdale to Alston, Cumbria, then through Brampton, Carlisle, Cumbria to Gretna, Scotland. Particularly for cattle droving, the shorter route was advantageous when passable. The Summer Road is one of the most spectacular routes in England.
The Romans were responsible for building the first roads to meet at this point and the site of the original junction is just a few hundred yards away from the modern day intersection. In AD 71 the Romans took control of the North when they defeated the Brigantes, a Northern Celtic tribe at the Battle of Scotch Corner.
The location remained significant as a staging post with an inn, subsequently becoming a roadhouse in the early days of motorised travel. The £8 million Scotch Corner diversion opened in 1971, which created a grade separated junction on the A1.
Read more about this topic: Scotch Corner
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)