The A42 is a major trunk road in the

East Midlands The East Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It comprises the eastern half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It consists of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, L ...

region of the United Kingdom. It links junction 23A of the M1 motorway to junction 11 of the

M42 motorway The M42 motorway runs north east from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire to just south west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, passing Redditch, Solihull, the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and Tamworth on the way, serving the east of the Bi ...

. The A42 is in effect a continuation of the M42, and its junctions are numbered accordingly. It is built to a similar standard to the M42, being a grade separated dual carriageway. The Measham and

Ashby-de-la-Zouch Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sometimes spelt Ashby de la Zouch () and shortened locally to Ashby, is a market town and civil parish in the North West Leicestershire district of Leicestershire, England. The town is near to the Derbyshire and Staffordshir ...

bypass section was opened in August 1989 at a cost of £33m.

Junctions

Bridging link

The A42 was built by the UK Government in 1989 to link the northern section of the M42 to the M1. Although it is not designated as motorway, and has no hard shoulder, the road is fully grade separated and runs with two lanes each way, the same as the M42 to the south. The original planned line of the M42 saw it joining the M1 further to the north, crossing what is now the A50 Derby Southern Bypass and meeting the M1 north of Bardills Island (A52/M1 interchange).– Appleby Magna – Nottingham (maps)
Jukes, Steven. Pathetic Motorways.

Service stations

Donington Park services Donington Park is a motorway service station owned by Moto, near Kegworth village in the English East Midlands. It is accessed from the M1 motorway by junctions 23a (from the south) and 24 (from the north), and is part of the complex of jun ...

History of the road number

The current road is the second incarnation of the A42. The original (1923) route was

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spell ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

via

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. The whole road was renumbered in 1935 – the section from Reading to

Shillingford Shillingford a hamlet on the north bank of the River Thames in Warborough civil parish in South Oxfordshire, England. Its homes are not quite with Warborough by way of one residential road. It lies mostly on the A4074 between Oxford and Rea ...

became part of the A329, Shillingford to Oxford became part of the

A423 The A423 road is a primary A road in England in two sections. The main section leads from central Banbury to the A45 near Coventry. Route It starts in Banbury town centre as Southam Road and goes through the Southam Road Industrial Estate, ...

and Oxford to Birmingham became part of the A34. In 1993 the A423 was itself renumbered, with the section formerly the A42 becoming part of the

A4074 The A4074 is a British A road from the Reading suburb of Caversham to the Heyford Hill roundabout on the Oxford Ring Road. The road starts from a junction with the A4155 close to the northern side of Caversham Bridge (over the River Thames) b ...

from Reading to Oxford. The modern M42 does interchange with the former A42 at junction 4 near

Solihull Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blyth ...

: Stratford Road now being numbered A34 to the north of the junction and A3400 to the south.

References

External links