M1 Motorway near Northampton 1960
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This 1960 view shows the M1 just north of Junction 15 near Northampton, photographed from the Towcester Road bridge and looking south towards the railway bridge. Still in its earliest years, the motorway has the open, unfinished feel of Britain’s first long-distance motorway era, with no central crash barriers, no street lighting and only a narrow soft shoulder at the edge of the carriageway. At this stage the M1 also opened without a blanket speed limit, adding to the sense of a new road system still finding its form. The lightly trafficked carriageways, shallow cuttings, simple fencing and scattered vehicles give the scene a calm appearance that contrasts sharply with the busier, more engineered motorway network of later decades. It is a strong record of the M1 in its pioneering years, when even a minor roadside stop could leave a vehicle stuck in the mud beyond the edge of the tarmac.
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