Bewdley By-pass

People power brings Bewdley to a standstill as calls for a bypass for the historic Worcestershire town grows.

By 1980 Bewdley in Worcestershire, the onetime home of the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, was facing a familiar problem. Choked with traffic the roads of the ancient market town, including the Thomas Telford designed bridge over the River Severn, were seeing a level of usage undreamt of in 1798. Not surprisingly Christopher Milner of the Midlands Road Development Group is able to reel off a list of similarly affected local towns to reporter Peter Green.

Bewdley did get its bypass with a new road bridge over the River Severn being opened at Blackstone in 1987.