The Colchester bypass opened in 1933 (as the A12) and was not fitted with a cycle track. This was likely retrofitted to the road in the mid-1930s. It is also possible that the track was a footway.
A 1938 aerial photo shows a concrete track on one side of Cowdray Avenue only. There are tracks on both sides of Colne Bank Avenue.
The bypass consists of the Cymbeline Way, Colne Bank Avenue, Cowdray Avenue and St. Andrew’s Avenue. Since the 1930s the bypass has also been known as the Avenue of Remembrance, flanked in part with lime and cherry trees to commemorate fallen WWI soldiers.
This is due in part to the work of the Roads of Remembrance Association (RRA), founded during WWI but not active as a lobbying group until 1927. In that year, the RRA secretary, Mrs. W.H. Morrison, reactivated the association appointing to its committee six peers, five MPs and several knights. According to the association’s letterhead, it worked to “secure the beauty of new highways, especially of new arterial roads — in remembrance.”
The RRA argued, unsuccessfully, for arterial roads to be adorned with fountains and statues or, with limited success, to be lined with trees, as on the Cymbeline Way.
