 In 1826 the road was rebuilt around the Devil's Punch Bowl to ensure that the gradient was no more than 5%.The road became part of the A3 when road numbering was introduced in the 1920s.By the start of the new millennium most of the A3 had been dualled; of the route from Southfields to Havant, only the section that passed through Hindhead and the Devil's Punch Bowl was still single carriageway.