The A1081 is a road in the south of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It starts at

Luton Airport London Luton Airport is an international airport located in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, situated east of the town centre, and north of Central London. The airport is owned by London Luton Airport Ltd (LLAL), a company wholly owned by L ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

and runs to High Barnet in

Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness Greatness is a concept of a state of superiority affecting a person or object in a particular place or area. Greatness can also be attributed to individuals who possess a natural ability to be better than al ...

via

Harpenden Harpenden () is a town and civil parish in the City and District of St Albans in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The population of the built-up area was 30,240 in the 2011 census, whilst the population of the civil parish was 29,448. Ha ...

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major town on the old Roman ...

and

London Colney London Colney () is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. It is located to the north of London, close to Junction 22 of the M25 motorway. It is near St Albans and part of the St Albans District. At the time of the 2001 census ...

, a distance of around . For most of its length, the A1081 follows the route of the original A6.

The route

The first section of the A1081 runs south-west from Luton Airport to the spur of the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

on the southern outskirts of Luton. This section is a

dual carriageway A dual carriageway ( BE) or divided highway ( AE) is a class of highway with carriageways for traffic travelling in opposite directions separated by a central reservation (BrE) or median (AmE). Roads with two or more carriageways which are ...

known as ''New Airport Way''. Just west of the airport, there is a junction with the

A505 The A505 is an A-class road in England. It follows part of the route of the Icknield Way and the corresponding Icknield Way Path and runs from Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire to the A11 road (England), A11 Abington Interchange North in Cambri ...

. At the M1 spur, the A1081 turns south to join the route of the original A6. It skirts the grounds of Luton Hoo estate, then crosses into

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gov ...

, passing through Harpenden before reaching St Albans. In St Albans, the road has a junction with the A4147 and A1057 (both making up the former A414), then meets the A5183 (the former A5). At this point, it bears south-east, bypassing London Colney before reaching junction 22 of the

M25 motorway The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major road encircling most of Greater London. The motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the lon ...

. There is a junction with the current A414, the ''North Orbital Road'', just north of London Colney. The A1081 then

multiplexes In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

with the M25 to junction 23 at

South Mimms South Mimms is a village and civil parish in the Hertsmere district of Hertfordshire in the East of England. It is a small settlement located near to the junction of the M25 motorway with the A1(M) motorway and is perhaps more widely known because ...

, the junction with the current A1 and

A1(M) A1(M) is the designation given to a series of four separate motorway sections in England. Each section is an upgrade to a section of the A1, a major north–south road which connects London, the capital of England, with Edinburgh, the cap ...

. From here, it continues south-east to High Barnet, ending at a junction with the Great North Road (the former A1, now the A1000).

History

The A1081 designation was originally used on The Woodford Spur in east London. The Woodford Spur is a 1920s new build road that branches off the A12 (former A106) Eastern Avenue at the Gants Hill Roundabout and heads through Woodford. It was allocated the A1081 number in 1925, although the road hadn't yet opened. It was opened not long afterwards between the A106 and A11 (now A1199), with the section to the A104 opened later (shown as under construction on the 1932 OS Maps). The A1081 number became redundant after World War II when the road became an extension of the

A406 The North Circular Road (officially the A406 and sometimes known as simply the North Circular) is a ring road around Central London in England. It runs from Chiswick in the west to Woolwich in the east via suburban North London, connecting ...

. The North Circular has since been rerouted and so the section east of the

A113 A113 (sometimes A-113, A-1-13, A1-13 or A11-3) is an inside joke and Easter egg in media developed by alumni of California Institute of the Arts, referring to the classroom used by graphic design and character animation students. History Student ...

is now numbered A1400. The current A1081 was established in the 1950s, when the section of the A6 from

to High Barnet was so renumbered following the re-routing of the A1 onto the 1920s-built Barnet Bypass. When the M25 was built in the 1980s, it took over the section of the A6 from

, which was already dual carriageway. The section from

Luton Luton () is a town and unitary authority with borough status, in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 census, the Luton built-up area subdivision had a population of 211,228 and its built-up area, including the adjacent towns of Dunstable an ...

was then renumbered the A1081.

References

Roads in England Roads in Hertfordshire {{England-road-stub