Purley Way is a section of the
A23 trunk road in the
London Borough of Croydon, in the areas of
Purley,
Waddon and
Broad Green, and has given its name to the out-of-town shopping area alongside it with a
catchment area covering most of
South London. It was designed as a
bypass for Croydon and was opened in April 1925 and was formed from improvements to pre-existing local roads, from north to south: Waddon Marsh Lane, Waddon Court Road and Coldharbour Lane (Thornton Road, the northern section of the by-pass, was not renamed). In 1932, Purley Way became the first road in the
United Kingdom to be lit with
sodium lights.