The A583 is a primary road from Preston to

Blackpool Blackpool is a seaside town in Lancashire, England. It is located on the Irish Sea coast of the Fylde peninsula, approximately north of Liverpool and west of Preston, Lancashire, Preston. It is the main settlement in the Borough of Blackpool ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, via Kirkham. It runs a distance of 17 miles (27.4 km), and was previously the main route into Blackpool until the construction of the

M55 motorway The M55 is a motorway in Lancashire, England, which can also be referred to as the Preston Northern Bypass. It connects the seaside resort of Blackpool to the M6 motorway, M6 at Preston, Lancashire, Preston. It is 12.2 miles (19.6 km) in ...

Route

The A583 runs from the A59 Ring Way in Preston city centre to Blackpool town centre, terminating near the town's

North Pier North Pier is the most northerly of the three coastal piers in Blackpool, England. Built in the 1860s, it is also the oldest and longest of the three. Although originally intended only as a promenade, competition forced the pier to widen its ...

. It is mostly a

primary route Primary or primaries may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Primary (band), from Australia * Primary (musician), hip hop musician and record producer from South Korea * Primary Music, Israeli record label Work ...

, although there are non-primary sections in the urban areas at both ends of the route. The road begins as Friargate and heads out of the city centre as Fylde Road, becoming Watery Lane after passing under the

Blackpool Branch Lines The Blackpool branch lines are two railway lines running from the West Coast Main Line at Preston railway station, Preston to Blackpool. The main branch, which is double-tracked and Railway electrification in Great Britain, electrified, runs ...

to meet the A5072. As Watery Lane, it becomes a dual carriageway and acts as a bypass for the Riversway Docklands and the Ashton-on-Ribble area. After becoming Riversway, it then merges with the A5085 Blackpool Road and continues west as Blackpool Road, shortly before the A584 branches off towards

Lytham St Annes Lytham St Annes () is a seaside town in the Borough of Fylde in Lancashire, England. It is on the The Fylde, Fylde coast, directly south of Blackpool on the Ribble Estuary. The population of the built-up area at the 2021 United Kingdom census, ...

. The road passes around the villages of Clifton and Newton-with-Scales as Blackpool Road before reaching the market town of Kirkham. The road's original route passed through Kirkham until 1936, when the Kirkham bypass was built taking the road around the south side of the town. After passing Kirkham, the road continues as Blackpool Road to meet the

A585 The A585 is a primary road in England which runs from Kirkham to Fleetwood in Lancashire. The road runs a total distance of just under , on a mixture of rural and urban residential/commercial streets. The section north of the M55 formerly ...

and B5259 at a roundabout close to

Kirkham Grammar School Kirkham Grammar School is a selective, co-educational private day and boarding school in Kirkham, Lancashire, England. It was founded in 1549. Its roots can be traced back to the chantry school attached to St Michael's Church in the 13th c ...

and Ribby Hall Holiday Village. It continues west towards Blackpool, becoming Preston New Road shortly before a crossroads with the B5260. Three miles (4.8 km) further on it meets the B5410, and junction 4 of the

shortly after, entering the District of Blackpool in doing so. As Preston New Road it travels around the edge of the Mereside estate and through Marton before reaching the large Oxford Square junction, where the A587, A5073 and B5390 all join it. The A583 then loses its primary status, heading north as Whitegate Drive to the Devonshire Square junction where it meets the B5124 and B5266. It then turns west and heads into the town centre as Church Street, where the B5390 rejoins it. After passing through part of the town centre along Church Street and Abingdon Street it terminates at Talbot Square, where

and the town's war memorial are located, as well as the Town Hall. At this terminus it, along with the A586, joins the A584, the road which joined the A583 near Preston. Major junctions on the road are the A5085 Blackpool Road at Lea, the A584 at Clifton, the A585 west of Kirkham, the western terminus of the

just outside Blackpool where the A5230 also terminates, the A5073/A587 in Marton, and the A584/A586 in Blackpool town centre.

History

The Clifton to Blackpool section of the A583 was formerly a privately owned

toll road A toll road, also known as a turnpike or tollway, is a public or private road for which a fee (or ''Toll (fee), toll'') is assessed for passage. It is a form of road pricing typically implemented to help recoup the costs of road construction and ...

owned by the Clifton and De Hoghton estates. The tolls were abolished in 1902, when it became a main road as a result of an agreement made by Lancashire County Council and Fylde Rural District three years earlier which also saw the construction of new sections of road at Clifton and Blackpool. The increased use of private cars, buses and

charabanc A charabanc or "char-à-banc" (often pronounced "sharra-bang" in colloquial British English) is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early coach (vehicle), motor coach, usually open-topped, common in UK, Britain during the early part of the 20th ...

s in the 1920s, and the poor condition of the road, made it one of

Lancashire County Council Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashire is smaller than the ceremonial county, which additionally includes Blackburn with Dar ...

's priorities in its road improvement schemes. The Blackpool to Clifton section of the road was reconstructed between 1929 and 1936, and as part of the reconstruction project bypasses were built to take the road around Kirkham and the centre of Clifton. The route of the A583 changed again in the mid 20th century, when the Riversway section of the road was constructed to bypass the

Ashton-on-Ribble Ashton-on-Ribble is a suburb in the West of Preston, Lancashire, England. The population at the 2021 Census was 8,700. Ashton-on-Ribble was recorded in the ''Domesday Book''. Ashton-on-Ribble contains the historic Preston Docks, once the largest ...

area of Preston. Its previous route now forms parts of the A5085 and A5072.

Preston Western Distributor Road

Until 2023 the M55 had no Junction 2.CBRD Motorway Database – M55
/ref> As part of a

City Deal City Deals are an initiative enacted by the UK government in 2012 to promote economic growth and infrastructure while ultimately shifting control of decisions away from the central government to local authorities. City Deals are generally set for t ...

signed between Preston City Council and central Government in late 2013, both

and

Preston City Council The City of Preston, or simply ''Preston'' (), is a local government district with city status in Lancashire, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Ribble and has a population of (). The neighbouring districts are Ribble Valley, South ...

agreed in principle to build a 'Preston Western Distributor Road' which would link the A583/A584 outside Clifton to a new Junction 2 of the M55. Construction of the new road began in September 2019 and involved a new motorway junction, four new bridges and two viaducts. Completion of the £200m scheme was scheduled for early in 2023 and the road opened on 3 July 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:5-0583 Roads in England Roads in Lancashire A583 road