M1 anniversary prompts memories - and a 1962 film

The M1 motorway hitting the milestone of 65 years has prompted a number of people to take a trip down memory lane.

The construction of the London to Leeds route, the first intercity motorway in the UK, began in 1958, and slowly moved up the country in phases over the following decades.

Its arrival in the East Midlands came in the 1960s, and many residents remembered its construction.

One has even unearthed footage of their parents driving on the road in 1962, when they drove their car from North Wales down to the motorway, to catch a ferry for a holiday in Italy.

Graham Moore said he digitised the footage, shot on 8mm film, during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

He said it showed his parents, Gordon and Dilys Moore, enjoying a drive along a relatively traffic-free stretch of the motorway southbound towards London in July or August 1962.

The clip is part of a longer film of his parents' "entire adventure", which was donated to the National Library of Wales in 2021, and Mr Moore said it was "an interesting piece of social history".

Meanwhile, Jill Chalmers, from Sandiacre in Derbyshire, recalled the motorway's construction in the 1960s.

She said: "I remember, at the age of nine, sliding down the bank and moving the pole markers alongside the proposed motorway."

Les Singleton lived in Strelley, Nottinghamshire, when the motorway was constructed.

Mr Singleton, of Bakewell in Derbyshire, said: "A couple of days before that stretch of the M1 opened, I rode my bike down it with my mates."

Kate Woodiwiss was also a child in Nottinghamshire and "loved it" when the road arrived.

She said: "We lived at Huthwaite near junction 28.

"I can remember when they were building the motorway, me and my brothers and sisters used to walk across the fields and stand on the M1 bridge waving to passing traffic, singing 'M1 bridge, M1 bridge'."

But the new road was not great for everyone nearby.

Lizz Johnson recalled her family's farmland was directly in the way of the route.

She said: "My uncle Jack's farm in Selston was cut in half.

"He had a tunnel built to move his cows through to the other half of his land."

Marking the 65-year anniversary since the road opened to traffic for the first time, a National Highways spokesperson said the road remained "a key artery".

They said: "Sixty-five years on, the motorway continues to support the British economy and moves goods and people to places around the country."

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