Nailbourne Valley. It was feared
that an embankment of this height
might appear to wall off the valley.
To reduce its apparent height, the
ground has been built up on each
side of the new road so that it now
appears to travel across the valley
on a shallow embankment. To the
west, in the vicinity of Bekesbourne
Road the reverse procedure has
been adopted. Here the cutting for
the new road has been extended
out into the valley by building up
the ground to mask nearby houses
from traffic noise from the bypass.
Before these landscape works
could be carried out the existing
Topsoil and Subsoil were stripped-
off and stacked separately nearby.
Surplus chalk and clay from the
excavated cuttings along the route
were deposited to reshape the
land, and the Subsoil and Topsoil
were then respread and seeded.
This land will soon be returned to
grazing. In this way, farming land
taken for the bypass has been kept
to minimum in the fill areas and this
policy has been followed in the cut
areas, where side slopes have been
kept as steep as possible to keep
land acquisition to the minimum.
This results in steeper slopes in the
deepest cutting where more stable
chalk is penetrated.
Five bridges were necessary to
separate through traffic from the
local traffic, farm vehicles and
pedestrians. All are in concrete
with particular attention paid to the
surface finishes. These bridges
together with the 2% miles of new
bypass dual carriageways and the
1% miles of new carriageway
towards Barham cost E3i million,
and took twenty-two months to
build.
The historic village of Bridge has
suffered increasingly over the years
as the traffic along the A2 has
built up, together with its associated
noise, vibrations and fumes. The
inconvenience to the villagers has
been shared by drivers who have
been hampered by the steep hills
which flank the village to the north
and the south, and the congested
main street with buildings abutting
the highway. Now the village will
be able to breathe more freely again,
and the A2 traffic can travel
unchecked and in safety on a new
purpose built road.