This contract was 1.6 miles in length, cost £2.4 million and commenced in June 1966 and was completed in June 1968. The contractors were Holland & Hannen & Cubitts Ltd.

The contract included Meadowhall Interchange, which gave access to the upper and lower decks of Tinsley Viaduct, two major retaining walls and a complex of interchange bridges including crossing a double-track railway line in three places within 20 yards. There was one other underbridge and an arch footbridge. Extensive traffic management measures were required in this industrial area. Records show that earthmoving was mainly carried out with a team of DW 21's. There were delays during the winter but a rapid improvement of conditions during February made it possible to absorb the effects of bad weather later in the Spring.

Another noteworthy aspect at Meadowhall was the extent to which pulverised fuel ash (pfa) was used with 120,000 cu. yds. being imported from Thorpe Marsh power station at a rate of 60 lorry loads per day. The use of pfa., a low density material, has been a feature of many contracts where settlement due to existing ground conditions is possible but it can rarely have accounted for such a large proportion of the total earthmoving - nearly one quarter of the total with a further 500,000 cu. yds. of conventional cut and fill.

A special problem is encountered when placing pfa. for the moisture content has to be maintained at 24 per cent for efficient compaction. At the same time it reduced dust problems which can be acute in hot weather when the demand for water bowsers intensifies. To check the behaviour of the ground, the West Riding engineers installed pressure gauges throughout the fill areas and in Grange Mill Retaining Wall. The nature of the material precluded the use of towed rollers and large scale compaction plant and pedestrian rollers were used and satisfactory compaction achieved.

For the road pavement the contractor elected to lay sub-base material with a Blaw Knox PF 90 spreading machine. The final surfacing had a pitch bitumen binder.

On such a short length of motorway it was not always possible to maintain continuity of road construction, which depended on completion of the numerous structures throughout the site with interruptions tending to occur more often than would normally be the case with a longer contract.

This contract was 3.9 miles in length, cost £3.6 million and commenced in June 1966 and was completed in June 1968. The contractors were A. Monk & Co. Ltd.

The contract extended from the B6086 at Blackburn to half a mile south east of Tankersley.

The motorway here runs through tree-lined country side, including a golf course, and heavily wooded areas beneath which were hidden nearly 300 bell-pit mines. These were ironstone workings believed to have been started by monks in the 17^th century and continued for almost 150 years. Also among the finds were large areas of pillar and stall shallow coal mining, largely carried out during the 1926 strike period. Faced with large areas of motorway crossing a honeycomb of mines, the contractors carried out 30,000 ft. of 4 in. investigation drilling over a period of 10 weeks to decide the extra excavation necessary and the additional support by cement pressure grouting required for bridgeworks.

Connecting roads at Hesley Bar, as access to the two level interchange on the A629 replace the once notorious hill climb from Chapeltown.

This contract was 7.1 miles in length, cost £6.75 million and commenced in August 1966 and was completed in September 1968. The contractor was Dowsett Engineering Construction Ltd.

This was the longest contract on the Aston to Leeds section of M1 and includes the A61 Tankersley and the A635 Dodworth Interchanges.

Including interchange bridges on this section, two of which carry railway lines over the motorway and were designed by British Railways.

Leaving Tankersley the motorway passes through a side long cutting at Birdwell onto embankment with split level carriageways before climbing through a deep cutting at Needle Eye to Dodworth Interchange. The motorway continues to climb before decending over a curved embankment, again carrying split level carriageways. This section finished at Darton where it joined the next contract.

The need to provide an accommodation bridge crossing the massive cutting at Needle Eye gave rise to a three pin reinforced concrete arch with 80 ft. long prestressed concrete suspended side spans. The span of the arch is 285 ft. and has an overall length of 434 ft. at road level.

Other notable bridges are two "Wichert" footbridges and Cock Inn Bridge which carries a road on a gradient of 1 in 10 over the motorway in a single span.

The road construction and the plant involved was similar to that on adjacent contracts. On part of the contract instead of sealing the formation with surface dressing Visqueen waterproof sheeting was used when only small areas had to be protected.

This contract was 6.6 miles in length, cost £7.25 million and commenced in August 1966 and was completed in October 1968. The contractor was Costain Civil Engineering Ltd.

The contract involved the construction of two interchanges at Crigglestone and Low Swithen; diversion and improvement of the A637 and the re-alignment and reconstruction of seven existing roads, as well as preparatory work for the Woolley Edge service area.

In addition to the 400 ft. long bridge over the River Calder, bridgeworks included 18 overbridges, underbridges and culverts.

At Crigglestone work was stopped for over five months to enable the Coal Board to win coal seams that lay under the route of the motorway. The West Riding engineers then allowed for calculated settlement. In one instance a forecast of a 12 in. settlement at a bridge site proved to be correct within an inch. The West Riding engineers were able to prove that the degree of subsidence was predictable under the "Longwall" system of mining used.

On this section of motorway advantage was taken of sidelong ground to separate line and level carriageways in the interest of economy of earthworks and also to increase the visual interest of the motorist, often an important consideration in safer driving.

Plant used by the contractors for the earthworks included rubber-tyred 657's and TS24 motor scrapers; some DW12's and a few crawler hauled units. Soil was compacted by the self propelled DW21/Hyster grid roller which travelled at 10-12 m.p.h. and 72 T's. The formation level was finished by motor graders prior to being sealed by surface dressing with tar and chippings.

The surfacing sub-contractor Ameys Asphalt used an 18 ft. Vogele paver for laying the base and PF90's for the wearing course. Asphalt production plants were established locally.

This contract was 4.6 miles in length, cost £4 million and commenced in August 1965 and was completed in April 1967. The contractor was the Sir Alfred McAlpine, Leonard Fairclough Consortium.

The contract extended from south of the A650 Ardsley Interchange on embankment into cutting at Kirkhamgate, over deep embankment adjacent to Wrenthorpe Golf Course rising to the A638 Dewsbury Road Interchange, then crossing Queen Drive and terminating at the Horbury Road Bridge.

Interesting VariationOrders included the erection of the motorway fencing, the provision of a boat to take soundings in the old gravel workings and the strengthening of the floor of an archway under the railway which provided the lorry access to the flooded gravel workings. The work was completed before the start of the adjacent contract. The rock came by road from a quarry in Morley. The contract was extended because the earthworks' balance went seriously wrong when the predicted unsuitable material in the Snapethorpe cutting turned out to be suitable.

The Use of Colliery Shale. Shale from the tip east of the M1 and south of Queens Drive was used in the works. When excavated it was hot and caused clouds of dust to drift across the site towards Ossett.

Queens Drive Bridge. An existing concrete retaining wall 3 - 4m high supporting the south-side of Queens Drive, one day slowly rotated and collapsed in text-book fashion because the support at the front of the wall had been removed.

Dewsbury Road Interchange Bridges. Some of the spans were jacked up and down 2 or 3 times because the pre-cast concrete bearings kept on cracking. The idea for the bearings came from a table at the back of a Reinforced Concrete Designers handbook, and our design failed to take into account of the inaccuracies in the manufacture of the pre-cast units, and resulted in the point loading of the bearings. Eventually layers of lead were used to spread the loading over the appropriate area of the bearings.

Wakefield - Ossett Railway Line. The original contract included the provision of a single span underbridge to carry the M1 over the railway, but early in the contract period, British Rail indicated that they were going to close the line. The Resident Engineer got a "rocket" from Fred Oliver for phoning British Rail at York and trying to speed up the decision. The bridge was deleted from the contract and an embankment for the motorway was constructed in the railway cutting. This cutting also provided endless source of sample carpet squares, which had been tipped, for the homes of the site staff.

Bushy Beck. The National Coal Board removed all the coal from under the motorway embankment before the contract started. The replacement of material up to original ground level was supervised by county engineers. A multi-plate armco culvert carried the stream under the M1 and in the early days of the contract one of our engineers Andy Peach wrote off a Land Rover by driving it into the excavation for the culvert. He was not seriously hurt.

One morning, after a period of continuous rain, when the embankment, carriageway drainage and pavement were complete, water was found to be pouring out of the side of the embankment 1 - 2m below carriageway level. To cut a long story short, a number of gully connections had not been correctly made. This event led to the use of CCTV cameras to check the construction of the drainage on other sections of the M1.

Old Mine Workings, South of Batley Road. Again, after a period of rain, the eastern side of the cutting immediately south of Batley Road collapsed. It was riddled with horizontal addits. The side of the cutting was excavated and reformed. Grout was injected into the old workings under the underpass from the Batley Road to Gawthorpe.

All the coal from the shallow workings under the bridge and the surrounding area was removed to an NCB depot. The collapsed old workings and the supporting pillars of coal could be clearly seen in the temporary diversion of the road. Entry into the Supervisor of Works' office on the Batley Road, was sometimes impossible. It was full of plastic sacks full of coal.

Underpass South of Bradford Road. As soon as the motorway was complete, the ends of this accommodation underpass were blocked up and it was used to force rhubarb.

This contract was 4.5 miles in length, cost £5.4 million and commenced in May 1965 and was completed in October 1967. The contractor was A. Monk & Co.

The Contract included the construction of three interchanges. The first of these was the Wakefield - Bradford Trunk road (A650) at Ardsley, the second is the three level interchange at Lofthouse with the Lancashire - Yorkshire Motorway (M62) and the third with the Wakefield - Leeds Trunk Road (A61) at Stourton.

The area through which this length of motorway passes is semi-urban in character and considerable works on roads crossed by the motorway were undertaken. The total length involved, including interchange slip roads, was of the order of 7 miles.

The earthworks comprised approximately 2 million cu. yds. of excavation about half of which was in rock. The majority of this material was used to form embankments, unsuitable material being carted to tip. As there was a surplus of cut over fill on the job it was not necessary to use any imported filling material.

Over 1500 tons of workable coal was excavated and carted to the National Coal Board's Depot at Calder Grove from the cutting at Ardsley Interchange.

All main drainage is in heavy duty concrete pipes having Cornelius rubber joints and laid on a granular bed, to allow for mining subsidence. The total length of drainage in the Contract was over 40 miles.

The carriageway construction of the motorway was 4 in. of Hot Rolled Asphalt on a 7 in. asphalt base. The sub-base of crushed Limestone had a minimum thickness of 9 in., this being increased in cuttings, depending on the C.B.R. value of the sub-base.

Twenty-one major structures were constructed, eight of these being associated with the interchange of Lofthouse. Special methods of design were employed for a mumber of these to allow for the effects of future mining subsidence. While the majority of bridges have post-tensioned prestressed deck beams, those on the curved roundabout bridges at Lofthouse employ steel box girders. A notable structure is Urn Farm Accomodation Bridge, a three pin arch structure in reinforced concrete.

The M1 Motorway by now was completed to the outskirts of Leeds at Stourton. The completion of the motorway to the city centre came later and is covered under 'The City motorways'.

A. Monk & Co. of Warrington commenced the first section from East Ardsley terminating at the Leeds City Boundary in May 1965 and were followed in August by the Sir Alfred McAlpine and Leonard Fairclough Consortium on the adjacent section to the south. By December 1965, the latter firm in 3 months had excavated and compacted in embankment upwards of 1million cu. yds. of earthworks and within 18 months had satisfactorily completed their works. In the meantime A. Monk & Co. made good progress in spite of suspension to the north at Sharpe Lane where coal extraction was taking place in the Robin Hood area. By August 1967 a section of the motorway was opened between the Dewsbury Road and Bradford Road interchanges and in October work to the Leeds City Boundary was completed both assisting local traffic. The southernmost section from Aston to Tinsley Viaduct was let to Dowsett Engineering Construction Ltd. who within two years had completed their works and with the later completion of the M1 and M18 contracts to the south (in December 1967) connected Sheffield to London and the A1(M) Doncaster By-pass.

During this period the Tinsley Viaduct between Sheffield and Rotherham was under construction and to the north a further four major contracts were let in rapid succession to Holland & Hannen & Cubitts, A. Monk & Co. Ltd. (2^nd contract), Dowsett Engineering Construction Co. Ltd. (2^nd contract) and Costain Civil Engineering.

By June 1968 works were completed to the Tankersley interchange south of Barnsley and with the completion of Tinsley Viaduct enabled traffic to advance up the M1 from London to Barnsley. By August the motorway became viable to Dodworth, leaving the remaining 10 miles for completion in October within the contract period.

The last section of the M1 in the West Riding was completed in October 1968 following which it was formally opened by the Rt. Hon. Richard Marsh MP, who drove the full length from Aston to Leeds. Sir Owen Williams and Partners had completed their section of M1 through Nottinghamshire and had progressed the M18 from M1 to the Doncaster By-pass A1(M).

It was inevitable that during the 3½ year period during which 35 miles of motorway and 40 miles of side roads associated with the motorway were under construction that some inconvenience to local life would occur. Not withstanding this, genuine interest was shown by all members of the community in this vast undertaking. To achieve completion some 13 million cu. yds. of excavation in all materials have been placed as fill in embankments and a further 2 million cu. yds. of fill have been imported from local sources including some 200,000 tons of pulverised fuel ash from Thorpe Marsh Power Station. During operations approximately 50,000 tons of surface coal was exposed and removed, of which 21,000 tons of useable coal was delivered to the NCB. Approximately 250 miles of drains of all types have been laid and 2¾ million sq. yds. of road pavement constructed on both the motorway and associated side roads.

The final costs for the whole of the M1 motorway in West Yorkshire was in the order of £36.8 million excluding Tinsley Viaduct and the River Calder Bridge. Perhaps the most impressive statistic being for settlement claims by contractors which amounted to only 2.1% of total expenditure.