How are motorways named (eg m60, m62, m1)?
One needs to look at the situation in place before the coming of the motorways – the system that is still used today to number classified all-purpose roads, in other words all A and B class roads. The system works in a series of “zones”, based around London and Edinburgh, and using the single digit A roads as boundary markers. Basically, that means that any road that starts between the A4 and A5, for example, has a number that begins with 4. The exception is that the boundary between the 1 and 2 zones isn’t the A2, but the Thames. This can be seen very easily by looking at any map of north Kent! The single digit A roads were set as follows: A1 London – Edinburgh A2 London – Dover A3 London – Portsmouth A4 London – Bath (extended to Avonmouth in 1935) A5 London – Holyhead A6 London – Carlisle A7 Edinburgh – Carlisle A8 Edinburgh – Gourock (now cut back to Greenock) A9 Edinburgh – Inverness (John O’Groats from 1935, now Edinburgh – Thurso) Generally, the smaller the number of digits of a
