It was fifty years ago today…
Speak to anyone in the village about what has changed most over the last thirty or forty years and high on many lists will be the increase in the volume of traffic. Our narrow lanes were, of course, never designed for modern traffic and with parking spaces at a premium we are mostly resigned to the lines of parked cars stretching from one end of the village to the other.
Of course attention has been paid to the needs of both motorists and pedestrians (who are, after all, the same people for the most part) with an improved road surface and traffic markings set alongside greater enforcement of speed limits’ Even back in the sixties when car ownership was more exclusive than it is today complaints about traffic density were common. The 50s, 60s and 70s saw the birth of our motorway system as our two lane ‘A’ roads became increasingly clogged. For example once the M5 was built Honiton could return to be a pleasant market town and not a byword for gridlock in the summer months.
As these photos remind us Ipplepen was not immune to these trends and by 1967 with greater car ownership and buses struggling to get through the small gap at the top of Bridge Street the green light was given for Ipplepen’s own road widening scheme. So the demolition teams moved in and a chunk of Ipplepen’s history was lost forever.
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