CBRD - Histories - Opening Booklets (original) (raw)

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Nobody celebrates a new road these days. There's no ceremony, no fanfare. No mementos for the locals to keep. No fanfare or cheering. There's rarely a ribbon to cut and a distinct shortage of little bronze plaques. And, of course, there's no glossy booklets to record what an achievement it all was.

Partly this is because it isn't an achievement. We've built a lot of roads in the last century and it's not a big thing any more. And partly it's because roads just aren't something to celebrate any more. Today they're done quietly for fear of an environmental backlash, as if building a road gives civil servants a guilty conscience and the whole thing is better forgotten.

Until the 1970s, the Department of Transport usually issued a booklet of some kind to mark the opening ceremony. This part of the site lets you see just what was in them - rare, archive photos of newly-opened roads that have changed beyond all recognition and, just sometimes, a glimpse of what was planned at the time but never saw the light of day.

Preston Bypass

The "Preston By-Pass" was Britain's first motorway, opened in 1958 by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. The road that appeared then was barely a motorway by today's standards - two lanes each way with soft shoulders, a broad central reserve with a hedge, and just one junction in the middle. It ended at a roundabout on the A6 to the north and south of Preston.

This booklet was published to accompany the official opening ceremony and shows a road that bears almost no resemblance to the M6 of today.

M2 Motorway and Medway Bridge

The Medway Motorway, or Medway Towns Bypass, was opened in around 1965 as a handy way to get past Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester. The whole of the M2 was pretty much one big project, and these two booklets commemorate the opening of the road itself and the Medway Bridge, its major engineering feature. The motorway's western end has been upgraded out of all recognition from these documents in the last few years.

Skelmersdale Link to M6

The North-West's first New Town was at Skelmersdale. The place isn't exactly a favourite with the locals these days, but back in 1970, it represented the beginning of a new era. It could be said that the town came of age when its fledgeling road network was first connected to the wider world with this section of road, since turned into part of the M58.

The booklet explains the future plans for the area, including the extension of the road east across the south of Wigan, and also shows some planned junction layouts in Skelmersdale that never saw the light of day.