THIRTY years ago, a new road opened that would create an impressive new route into Poole.

The Holes Bay Relief Road was built on land reclaimed from the town’s famously huge harbour.

The £9million scheme was one of the more impressive achievements of an era when road-building was very much in fashion.

Work on reclaiming the land had begun in the early 1980s, to make possible a new route between the town centre and the Upton bypass. Today, planning policies protecting the harbour would be likely to scupper a similar idea.

The work meant that homes at nearby Sterte Esplanade would no longer be waterfront properties. Pleas for a lagoon to be created between the houses and the road were rejected.

The road building began in 1985. As well as the road over the reclaimed land, the project involved building a link road on the route of the old railway line to Broadstone.

When the Holes Bay stretch of the road was finished in February, 1989, the job of officially opening it was given to a pub landlord – future councillor Judy Butt.

The Echo reported: “The Fleetsbridge pub in Wimborne Road was such a haven for tired workmen after a hard day’s slog building the road that constructors Costain asked Mrs Butt to perform the official opening of the one-mile stretch from Holes Bay to Cabot Lane.”

Mrs Butt told the paper: “It was a great honour. The men have become familiar faces drinking in the pub and borrowing things they needed.”

The link road to Broadstone was opened in a more traditional civic ceremony on March 1, 1989.

But additions and improvements to the relief road road were already being planned. In 1990, a £2.6m scheme was proposed to remove a bottleneck at the Poole end of the road by making the whole route a dual carriageway. The work involved creating a new roundabout system at the Hunger Hill and Sterte Road junction.

The scheme involved the demolition of a row of six homes, Brighton Cottages. Negotiations and compulsory purchase took 18 months, but in 1991, they were flattened in six hours.

Thirty years later, the Hunger Hill roundabout is being revamped once again – as part of the £11.7m ‘Townside’ scheme to improve the area between the roundabout and Poole Bridge.