The A433 road is an
A road and
primary route
The United Kingdom has a network of roads, of varied quality and capacity, totalling about . Road distances are shown in miles or yards and UK speed limits are indicated in miles per hour (mph) or by the use of the national speed limit (NSL) sy ...
in
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean.
The county town is the city of Gl ...
, England.
Route
It starts at a junction with the
A46 at
Dunkirk north of junction 18 of the
M4 and northeast of
Chipping Sodbury. It runs northeast for to a junction with the
A429 just west of
Cirencester
Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...
On its way to Cirencester the road passes the spectacular
Westonbirt Arboretum
Westonbirt, The National Arboretum is an arboretum in Gloucestershire, England, about southwest of the town of Tetbury. Managed by Forestry England, it is perhaps the most important and widely known arboretum in the United Kingdom.
Planted ...
, and runs through the villages of
Westonbirt and Doughton, and the town of
Tetbury
Tetbury is a town and civil parish inside the Cotswold district in England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681. The population of the parish was 5,250 in ...
; then to the north of both
Cotswold Airport
Cotswold Airport (formerly Kemble Airfield) is a private general aviation airport, near the village of Kemble in Gloucestershire, England. Located southwest of Cirencester, it was built as a Royal Air Force (RAF) station and was known as RAF ...
(formerly RAF Kemble) and
Kemble village.
Fosse Way
The last follow the route of the
Fosse Way. In this section the road passes the ''Thames Head'' pub (named for the
source of the Thames
Source may refer to:
Research
* Historical document
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* Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...
) before rising over a crest and descending into a steep-side cutting to pass under the
Golden Valley Line, through a narrow bridge which has no pavement for
pedestrians.
History
When the route was first designated in 1922, it finished at a junction with the A429 on the Fosse Way just west of Kemble near Jackaments Bottom. When RAF Kemble was built, circa 1937, the A429 was diverted south of the airfield to follow an upgraded existing road through Kemble village, and the section of the A429 north of the airfield became a continuation of the A433.
In the 1930s or 1940s the route was extended from Cirencester to the
A40 just west of
Burford
Burford () is a town on the River Windrush, in the Cotswold hills, in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England. It is often referred to as the 'gateway' to the Cotswolds. Burford is located west of Oxford and southeast of Che ...
, on the former route of the
B4425. In the 1980s this section was downgraded to become the B4425 again.
Sabre website: A433
/ref>
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:4-0433
Roads in England
Transport in Gloucestershire