People of the Great North Road. Here you can find out about people over the past two thousand years who have an association with the great route north.
Celia Fiennes
Celia Fiennes was an early travel writer. She toured extensively through England in the late 17th century. Her diaries describe many of the towns...
The Eleanor Crosses
The Eleanor Crosses constructed in the 1290s to commemorate the passing of the queen were prominent landmarks alongside the Great North Road at Grantham...
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe was an early travel writer who wrote with descriptive detail about what he saw. Most of the towns and cities along the Great North Road are recorded...
Daniel Albone
Daniel Albone’s family ran the Ongley Arms pub alongside the Great North Road in Biggleswade, just south of the bridge over the River Ivel. He became an entrepreneurial designer...
Dick Turpin
Dick Turpin, the “Flying Highwayman”, was famed for his bravery, resolution and generosity. A scoundrel and a thief but also a gentleman who minimised any...
King James I
A meandering but triumphant journey south along the Great North Road marked the start of the reign of King James I in 1603. It was his first visit to England...
Road Building Revolution
The growth of turnpikes after 1700 started to provide funding for investment but it was the road building revolution of the late 18th and the 19th centuries which...
Edmund Boulter
Edmund Boulter was a wealthy businessman and member of parliament who left his mark on the Great North Road. His properties came to include Wimpole and...
John Muir
John Muir was a 19th century conservationist who pioneered the national parks concept in the USA. He was born in Dunbar in 1838. The citizens of...
John Nevison – Highwayman
John Nevison was one of the most infamous highwaymen operating along the Great North Road. His gang of outlaws met at the Talbot Inn at Newark and robbed...
Emperor Hadrian
Hadrian visited Britain in the summer of AD 122 as part of his first major tour of the provinces. His primary concern was to to neutralise threats to.....
De Havilland – Hatfield
Many who travelled the Great North Road during the 20th Century will recall the latest De Havilland prototypes being flown above and around Hatfield – and.....
E M Forster
The writer Edward Morgan Forster lived at Rooks Nest House near Stevenage between the ages of 4 and 14. His time there had a lasting impact on him. In.....
Henry Royce
Sir Henry Royce, a founding partner in Rolls Royce, was born at Alwalton in 1863 where his father was the miller. When the family business failed, they moved.....
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was born on 25th December 1642 at Woolsthorpe close to the Great North Road near Colsterworth. Woolsthorpe Manor is now a National Trust.....
George Brown
George Brown was test rider for Vincent in their heyday and in 1961 took the Standing Start Kilometre World Record for up to 1000cc machines with an.....