Drovers and their herds would follow the line of Watling Street from Shrewsbury and over Cannock Chase to Brownhills, from where the Welsh Road ran through Stonnall, Castle Bromwich, Stonebridge, Kenilworth, Cubbington, Offchurch, Southam, Priors Hardwick, Boddington, Culworth, Sulgrave, Syresham, Biddlesden, and Buckingham.
The parish records of Helmdon record money being given in 1687 "to a poor Welshman who fell sick on his journey driving beasts to London",[2] but many lengths of the road coincide with parish or manorial boundaries, suggesting that it probably formed an ancient trackway dating to the pre-Roman era.
[1] The northern section of the route from Brownhills to Stonebridge was made a turnpike by the Broughton, Chester and Stonebridge Turnpike Trust in 1759, becoming better known as the Chester Road.
[4] The A550, running 6 miles from Eastham to Queensferry, is also called the Welsh Road.
[5] It links the conurbations of Merseyside in England and Deeside in Wales.