I.D.Margary in 'Roman Roads in Britain' describes this road as follows; 

'It seems clear that a direct road to Gloucester through Droitwich and Worcester branched from Ryknild Street to the south of Birmingham, near the alignment angle by Selly Park. Its course is at first represented by the main road through Bournville and Longbridge, now a .....

This was the great artery of the Roman military system in the west, and touched the County only at the outlying 'island' part of the Hundred of Oswaldslow, near Shipston on Stour. Because of the changes in the County boundaries, this has now sadly been lost to us.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          The road ran from Lincoln to Exeter, and served as a .....

Roman roads were once thought to be of two kinds, Streets which were paved with granite sets, and Ways which were unpaved, but archaeological evidence does not bear this out. They were however, all constructed of several layers which raised the road surface well above the level of the surrounding land, forming a causeway known as an agger.

The usual road for the passage of two vehicles without collision had a width of about 14 feet, but the agger would be considerably wider, making what we would call now a 'hard shoulder' on each side............                     

In the mid-19th century popular names had a habit of sticking. 'Cold Comfort' was the name given to a group of cottages in Church Walk (later School Walk) off Tybridge Street. The name was not official but popular, and like Hungerpit Wlk, off Ombersley Road, was thought to have been due to poor soil or absence of amenities. Cold Comfort and Hungry Harbour or Hungerpit are almost as common as Love's Grove. The names were....

The effect of the railways on road coaches in the Birmingham area fluctuated from boom to disaster. Until 1835, six coaches set out daily in each direction to and from Birmingham and Worcester

Alfred Watkins, famous for his book 'The Old Straight Track' and Ley Lines, gave a lecture to the Woolhope Society in 1922, at which he put forward the view that place-names containing 'White' or a corruption of White, pointed to ancient salt roads or leys.

Toothills are rounded hills rising beside ancient trackway, which were pre-Roman places of worship, dedicated to Teutates, or Toot. Lees considered Elbury Mount to be a Toothill, and that the ancient track called Porte Fields which ran between Helbury Hill

The old roads were alive with multifarious travellers, and in 1911, an old contributor to a Worcester paper looked back with nostalgia:'The cycle and the motor car have in some measure restored life to our highways, but our modern vehicles cannot invest

In the Worcestershire Archaeological Society's Transactions of 1936, Edward F. Gray of Ripple Hall recorded an ancient trackway going through Ripple Churchyard, as follows:Bredon Hill and Midsummer Hill were once connected by a track, now partly overgrown

Worcestershire was once part of a large river estuary with the range of the Malvern Hills on the west side, and the hills of Clent and Lickey leading to the Ridgeway on the eastern border. The rivers were tidal to Bewdley at the least, with great areas

Of the four greatest roads built by the Romans in Britain, only one, the Foss Way, touched the area of modern Worcestershire, and that at the two outlying 'island' parts, which have now been lost to us by the re-drawing of the county borders. The two most