The pollution of soils by heavy metals from automobile sources is a serious environmental issue. These metals are released during different operations of the road transport such as combustion, component wear, fluid leakage and corrosion of metals. Lead, cadmium, copper, and zinc are the major metal pollutants of the roadside environments and are released from fuel burning, wear out of tyres, leakage of oils, and corrosion of batteries and metallic parts such as radiators etc. (DOLAN et al. 2006).The majority of the heavy metals are toxic to the living organisms and even those considered as essential can be toxic if present in excess. The heavy metals can impair important biochemical processes posing a threat to human health, plant growth and animal life (JARUP 2003;MICHALKE 2003;SILVA et al. 2005). Studies have shown that such pollutants can be harmful to the roadside vegetation, wildlife, and the neighbouring human settlements (MUSKETT & JONES 1980;KHAN & FRANKLAND 1983;NDIOKWERE 1984;IQBAL et al. 1994;FERRETTI et al. 1995;CASELLES 1998;TURER & MAYNARD 2003). The distribution of these metals in the roadside soils is strongly but inversely correlated with the increase in the distance from road (WARREN & BIRCH 1987; BHA-TIA & ChOUDHRI 1991;AKSOY 1996). This study constitutes a part of a broader research project on the ecology and conservation of the roadside Abstract: Environmental pollution of heavy metals from automobiles has attained much attention in the recent past. The present research was conducted to study heavy metal contamination in roadside soils of northern England. Roadside soil samples were collected from 35 sites in some counties of northern England and analysed for four heavy metals (cadmium, copper, lead, zinc). Their concentrations and distributions in different road verge zones (border, verge, slope, ditch) were determined. Lead concentration was the highest in the soil and ranged from 25.0 to 1198.0 µg/g (mean, 232.7 µg/g). Zinc concentration ranged from 56.7 to 480.0 µg/g (mean, 174.6 µg/g) and copper concentration ranged from 15.5 to 240.0 µg/g (mean, 87.3 µg/g). Cadmium concentration was the lowest in the soil and varied from 0.3 to 3.8 µg/g (mean, 1.4 µg/g). Though the levels of heavy metals in roadside soils were higher as compared to their natural background levels in British soils, their concentrations in general, however, were below the 'critical trigger concentrations' for the contaminated soils. All the four heavy metals exhibited a significant decrease in the roadside soils with the increasing distance from the road. The border zone had the highest mean concentration of the four metals whereas the ditch zone exhibited the lowest mean concentration.