What is the Motorway Archive? Work on developing the UK Motorway system, which transformed British travel, started in the mid-1950s. The Motorway Archive celebrates the engineering achievement involved in the conception, planning, design and construction of this transport network by thousands of dedicated professionals. The Archive itself is a collection of as many of the documents and artefacts, which were associated with the development, as it has been possible to find. From this wealth of material has come the story of each motorway developed in Britain over the last 50 years. This is the story of one of them.

Region: Eastern

M4 Slough-Maidenhead By-pass (Junctions 5 to 7)

Buckinghamshire County Council (County Surveyor E H Frankland) was the agent for the Ministry of Transport for the design and supervision of construction of this five and a quarter mile length of the M4. The contractors Higgs and Hill Ltd and Richard Costain (Civil Engineering) Ltd formed a Joint Venture for the project which also included a half mile long dual carriageway all-purpose road and 5 and a half miles of side road diversions. The dual two-lane motorway was opened to traffic in March 1963. Widening to dual three-lane was completed in October 1971 by Amey Asphalt with the Eastern Road Construction Unit (Bucks Sub-Unit) as the Engineer.