Bend on the South Circular Road, Forest Hill

Image: © David Howard Taken: 16 Feb 2014

This bend illustrates how there is no such actual road as the South Circular. Instead it connects adjacent A roads between Kew Bridge and Woolwich Ferry, and where there were none then widens local residential roads such as this one. In fact this is not a real bend on a road, but a junction where the existing roads were widened to fit in the new A road whenever it was built. Local interest groups have ensured the South Circular never becomes a dual carriageway or loses any of its traffic lights unlike the gradual (but far from total) transformation of its northern counterpart, which included an entirely new stretch at almost motorway speed along the river Roding through East Ham in the 1990s, where it had previously fizzled out into passing through town centres like these to the south.

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