Coordinates: 51°31′30″N 0°16′16″W / 51.525°N 0.271°W Western Avenue, some 10 miles (16 km) in length, is one of the major roads leading out of London, England. It is part of the A40, leaving the city in a north-westerly direction. The A40 is named as Western Avenue from its junction with Old Oak Common Lane in East Acton; the junction now has traffic lights, but its name Savoy Circus commemorates the roundabout which once formed the junction. East of this point is Westway, part of the A40 Central London link from Paddington.
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The road
After Savoy Circus the road, dual carriageway, takes a bend towards North Acton, crossing the Great Western Main Line as it does so. Road junctions occur on this section, but from the Hanger Lane Gyratory System (a junction with the A406 and A4005, 2 miles (3 km)) the main intersections are by means of underpasses and slip roads (see History below). The first of these (4 miles (6.4 km)) is with the B452, connecting southwards to West Ealing and the River Thames at Kew Bridge; this is followed by the Greenford Roundabout (with the A4127, 6.75 miles (11 km)), connecting southwards to Southall; the Target Roundabout (with the A312, 9 miles (14 km)), a junction for Heathrow Airport; and the Polish War Memorial junction (with the A4180, 1 mile (1.6 km)) for Northolt Aerodrome.
In the final few miles of the road, there are minor junctions with the A437 (Hillingdon Circus) to Ruislip and Hillingdon, and with the B467 (Swakeleys Roundabout) to Uxbridge, before the road ends at the junction with the M40 at the Denham Roundabout, northwest of Uxbridge.
History
When first constructed, all intersections with other roads were flat junctions with roundabouts, resulting in significant congestion at busy periods. Now, the Greenford Road junction is a flyover, taking Western Avenue over the Greenford Road; all the other junctions take Western Avenue under the crossing road. The last junction to be improved was the Master Brewer junction with Long Lane, Hillingdon. Here, the work diverted Western Avenue to the north of the old line of the road, taking it under both Long Lane and the Uxbridge branch of the Metropolitan Line; Hillingdon London Underground Station was rebuilt as part of the work.
Hoover Building
A notable landmark on Western Avenue at Perivale, near Greenford, is the Art Deco Hoover Building, now a Tesco supermarket.
The Hoover Building is referred to in a song by Elvis Costello and "Westway" is the title of a tune by the 1980s rock band Sky. On the album notes bass player Herbie Flowers, who co-wrote the tune with Francis Monkman, says of "Westway": "When we recorded this album, I was living out in West London, and the studio was in Central London. Every night, I would drive home along the Westway elevated road and listen on my car tape player to what we'd done that day. This track is such a great groove for driving and it got its name because if I put it on at the Marylebone Road end of the Westway and stuck right on the speed limit, it would finish just as I came off the other end."'
Air crash
Western Avenue borders RAF Northolt in Uxbridge. On Tuesday 13 August 1996, in a very unusual accident, a Lear Jet landing at the airfield overshot the runway and ended up crashing into a van that just happened to be passing on the A40. Fortunately the van driver was not seriously injured although he was trapped for 40 minutes. It was later determined that the crash may have been caused when the Spanish pilot and co-pilot were having a disagreement over who should handle the landing. There was only one passenger on the Lear Jet, a female actor called Lisa Hogan. She was slightly injured.[1]
External links
References
- Edward Platt, Leadville: A Biography of the A40 (Picador, 2001). ISBN 0-330-39263-8.
- Original Newspaper report on the accident
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