A LONG-established family business at Leeming Bar has bought more land as an insurance policy against any revival of plans for an A1 motorway between Dishforth and Barton.

The garden centre of W Braithwaite and Sons, founded in 1890, has been looking for land since 1994, when the Highways Agency unveiled plans for upgrading the A1.

Because the road was to be widened on its eastern side, the business would have lost about two acres of high quality production land for trees, shrubs and roses. It would still have had enough land left at its present 4-acre site for growing on a more limited scale, as well as sales.

The A1 proposals were shelved two years later because of cuts in the national road building programme, but Phillip Braithwaite, a partner in the business, said the search for land had continued in case the plans were revived.

The business has now bought 7 acres on the southern side of the A684, opposite the existing site.

"We had to pay quite a lot for it," said Mr Braithwaite, "but it safeguards the business should the A1 upgrade eventually go ahead as originally planned. Any upgrade would take part of our new land as well but there would still be enough left for our requirements as long as they leave us with a good access."

The business was cut in half by the existing A1 bypass in 1960, when the road builders took land owned by the Braithwaites to the west of the existing site. Compensation received by the family enabled them to buy a small self-contained plot of land on the eastern side of the bypass, opposite the main site.

The business, which grows most of the plants it sells and has exacting soil requirements, was founded by John Braithwaite, who grew vegetables and cut flowers.

His son, Wilf, took over when he left the army after the First World War and he established his own nursery in the early Twenties. The senior partnership then passed to his son, David, whose wife, Edna, and two sons, Howard and Phillip, also became partners.