EPW020678 ENGLAND (1928). The Kingston Bypass, Coombe, 1928

What junction on the A3 is this?

This ordinary-looking view (and the close-up version, EPW020680) is extremely evocative. The 8½ miles of the Kingston By-Pass (A3) had only been fully opened (by the PM, Stanley Baldwin) on Friday 28 October 1927; this part was opened in April 1927. We are looking south: to the R is Coombe Lane (West). To the L is Coombe Lane (A238); we almost see it meeting Cambridge Ave, which crosses the A3, goes through the golf course and into New Malden. The line of trees to the L of the A3 indicates Beverley Brook. Within the next few years, much of the area will be covered in houses: ribbon development along both sides of the A3 to the S of Coombe Lane; rows of shops on both sides of Coombe Lane to the E of Beverley Brook; Fuller’s Garage on the SE corner between the A3 and Coombe Lane. That part of Cambridge Ave between Coombe Lane and the A3 will become a housing development and renamed Westcombe Ave (a dead-end on both sides of the A3); now there’s an underpass for pedestrians, and the traffic noise is deafening. By the War, there were traffic lights at the junction of Coombe Lane and the A3; in 1968 they were replaced by a flyover (in the course of building it, the wartime prefabs in the SW corner between the A3 and Coombe Lane West were demolished).