M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

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roadtester
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M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by roadtester »

Interesting article from the Manchester Evening News about how the M66 splits the Dicky Bird council estate in two.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... y-16894896

We do seem to have a habit of this sort of thing in the UK - residential housing fronting or almost fronting onto motorway or near-motorway standard roads. A2/A3/A4/A40 London approaches for example. Other countries in Northern Europe seem to avoid this AFAICT.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by fras »

Having driven along the M66 many times, I often wondered why the estate was so close, and always assumed there must have been a much narrower road there previously which the M66 took over. Its quite a shock to read that there was no road at all before the motorway. However this planning abortion is about par for the late 60s and early 70s. If you wanted to build it nowadays, I expect it would have to be put in a cut-and-cover tunnel.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by KeithW »

fras wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 09:23 Having driven along the M66 many times, I often wondered why the estate was so close, and always assumed there must have been a much narrower road there previously which the M66 took over. Its quite a shock to read that there was no road at all before the motorway. However this planning abortion is about par for the late 60s and early 70s. If you wanted to build it nowadays, I expect it would have to be put in a cut-and-cover tunnel.
There seem to have been plans for a road before the estate was built but it was originally planned as D2. The Motorway Archive suggests it was first on the planning list in the late 1930's

The article states that by adding the hard shoulder they decreased the land take by 12 ft by reducing the hard shoulder so the traffic would have been just as close to the traffic . I have to admit I have never driven that section of the M66 but it looks rather minimalist on GSV.

Here is what the Motorway Archive site has to say
http://www.ukmotorwayarchive.org.uk/en/motorways/motorway-listing/m66-bury-easterly-bypass/index.cfm?CFID=7c3b8aec-098e-48e4-857e-1518d09610ad&CFTOKEN=0 wrote: From the A58 Interchange at Heap Bridge the route followed a line which had been protected since the 1930's, when a large housing estate was being built. At that time it was intended that the By-pass would be a dual two-lane all-purpose road. Designed as a motorway in the early 1970's, however, it was to have grade separation, restricted access, and a consequently higher profile, requiring the construction of retaining walls through the estate.

Because of the limitations imposed by the development, it was necessary to minimise the width of the 'land-take' along this length. By lessening the width of the central reservation, the hard shoulders and the verges, an overall reduction of over 12 feet was achieved, without departing from the standard width of the carriageways. The height of the 'fence' walls on the top of the retaining walls was increased progressively to assist in noise reduction.

There are plenty of busy AP Strategic roads which are that close to housing, apart from the obvious London examples of the North Circular, A2, A12, A40 Westway, M11 etc there are others in Northern Industrial towns which were built in the late 1970's and 1980's such as here where the houses and road appeared at about the same time.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.54398 ... 6656?hl=en

They tried to reduce noise and visual intrusion by putting the road in a cutting where possible and by extensive planting but you never really get away from it and in fact after a while your brain just filters it out. Oddly developers are now building very close to the road and the buyers are flocking in. Not only that the new build houses are more expensive and smaller than older houses farther from the road so go figure.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.52809 ... 6656?hl=en
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by WHBM »

Look at this Brand New apartment block along the A13 in East London. So close that the landscaping has to be ivy going up the walls.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5171614 ... 384!8i8192

Whatever happened to planning controls … ?
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Bryn666 »

The M66 is hamstrung by being threaded through that gap as it really needs three lanes each way all the way up to the A682 split.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

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I know the tabloid article gives a brief insight into the history, but the old maps are interesting.

On the 1939 map you have Fern Grove as what appears to be a single road, with the houses far apart. It is a bit unclear so it may have been under construction at the time. There is a lot of development around Rochdale Old Road. Alder Avenue is developed to the west only.

On the 1960 map Rochdale Old Road has been further developed. Ferngrove is shown as two roads with footpaths running between them, and a cutting down the middle. They are linked at Kingfisher/Bullfinch and at Chaffinch. Alder Avenue is developed to the west with parkland to the east, but Renshaw Drive is developed on both sides - the western row of houses would have been demolished. Interestingly it looks like the M66 itself would have fit in the space available, but not the embankment.

It reminds me of the Paulsgrove Estate, which was also laid out around the forthcoming motorway.
Last edited by Johnathan404 on Sun Sep 15, 2019 17:40, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Glenn A »

The elevated section of the M6 from jct 5 to 6 passes so close to an estate of tower blocks you can actually see what the residents are watching on television. I can remember being caught in a jam on this section and being able to watch the Fern Britton era This Morning on someone's widescreen television.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by KeithW »

Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:37 I know the tabloid article gives a brief insight into the history, but the old maps are interesting.

On the 1939 map you have Fern Grove as what appears to be a single road, with the houses far apart. It is a bit unclear so it may have been under construction at the time. There is a lot of development around Rochdale Old Road. Alder Avenue is developed to the west only.

On the 1960 map Rochdale Old Road has been further developed. Ferngrove is shown as two roads with footpaths running between them, and a cutting down the middle. They are linked at Kingfisher/Bullfinch and at Chaffinch. Alder Avenue is developed to the west with parkland to the east, but Renshaw Drive is developed on both sides - the western row of houses would have been demolished. Interestingly it looks like the M66 would have fit in the space available, so there may have been another reason to demolish the houses anyway.

It reminds me of the Paulsgrove Estate, which was also laid out around the forthcoming motorway.
A lot of construction projects for housing and roads that was planned in the 1930's either didnt start before the outbreak of war or were paused. The house in Linthorpe were we lived in the 1960s had been started in 1938 but was not finished until 1950. Some works were completed, the A1085 known locally as the Trunk Road because it was built in the mid 1930's as S4/D2 was already open and shown on the 1938 OS Plan. The houses and businesses around it were mostly built in the 1950's and 60's.

The Dicky Bird Estate seems to have been caught up in that interregnum as on the 1937 map Linnet Drive, and Dove Drive are either built or under construction but the rest is dashed which usually means planned for the near future. The path for the road was protected from development and named Fern Grove but again not started until much later.

The 1960 plan shows the estate in place and while the road is unbuilt at the southern end they seem to have built an embankment which will gradually raise the road level so it can pass over the B6122. Where the flyover is there was a hockey club and a number of houses which were demolished and Back Rochdale road truncated when the Motorway was finally built.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Robert Kilcoyne »

Glenn A wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:55 The elevated section of the M6 from jct 5 to 6 passes so close to an estate of tower blocks you can actually see what the residents are watching on television. I can remember being caught in a jam on this section and being able to watch the Fern Britton era This Morning on someone's widescreen television.
The tower blocks are part of the Bromford Estate, which is based around Bromford Drive, and is primarily a mid-late 1960's housing development, built over a large part of the old Birmingham racecourse.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Glenn A »

Robert Kilcoyne wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 13:22
Glenn A wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:55 The elevated section of the M6 from jct 5 to 6 passes so close to an estate of tower blocks you can actually see what the residents are watching on television. I can remember being caught in a jam on this section and being able to watch the Fern Britton era This Morning on someone's widescreen television.
The tower blocks are part of the Bromford Estate, which is based around Bromford Drive, and is primarily a mid-late 1960's housing development, built over a large part of the old Birmingham racecourse.
Yes I was trying to remember its name. The motorway fits in with this modernist ideal of outer Birmingham, with motorways and tower blocks together. Ugly to some people, but so much of the mid sixties to early seventies, when concrete was king.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Crimbo »

I drive the 494 bus route around the Dicky bird estate regularly, there are several pedestrian subways which link the 2 sides of the estate plus a link road between the 2 sides at the top end, these regularly flood in heavy rain. The M66 also comes very close to the Topping Fold Estate with Renshaw Drive and Thompson Drive sitting at the bottom of the motorway embankment. The M66 North of Bury is Severely restricted to any kind of widening which it badly needs because of the Dicky Bird estate.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by fras »

The M66 is like so many roads where the planning goes back to the 30s, when traffic was much lighter and goods vehicles weighed half what they do now.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by M19 »

The homes of my Aunt and late Gran, on the same street, lie about two rows of housing from the edge of the M876 at the north edge of Bonnybridge. On the row nearest the motorway, the only separating feature is an acoustic fence between the street and the motorway hard shoulder. I'd imagine the row of housing facing the motorway would experience a lot of noise. A couple of rows back the noise is buffered quite a lot by the two rows between.

The closed nature of the street layout built in the 1950s does suggest a road was expected at some point, whether it was planned a dual, before becoming a motorway is uncertain.

The road was never a problem for my Gran and Aunt, and it was a source of fascination for me when I was little.

When I was there at 10 years old I won a drawing competition by drawing a stack about interchange layout, with traffic, pylons, the lot.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by KeithW »

Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:37 I know the tabloid article gives a brief insight into the history, but the old maps are interesting.

On the 1939 map you have Fern Grove as what appears to be a single road, with the houses far apart. It is a bit unclear so it may have been under construction at the time. There is a lot of development around Rochdale Old Road. Alder Avenue is developed to the west only.

On the 1960 map Rochdale Old Road has been further developed. Ferngrove is shown as two roads with footpaths running between them, and a cutting down the middle. They are linked at Kingfisher/Bullfinch and at Chaffinch. Alder Avenue is developed to the west with parkland to the east, but Renshaw Drive is developed on both sides - the western row of houses would have been demolished. Interestingly it looks like the M66 itself would have fit in the space available, but not the embankment.

It reminds me of the Paulsgrove Estate, which was also laid out around the forthcoming motorway.
There was no road on the 1939 1: 2500 map, there is a gap where a road can go and a footpath.
There was no road on the 1960 1: 2500 map either just some earthworks

Go into Sabre maps and look on the Seventh Series OS maps which were published in 1961 or look at the more high res scan of the full map at the the National Library of Scotland.
https://maps.nls.uk/view/91576429

The first part of the Bury bypass, the southern section was built in 1969. This was subsequently upgraded to motorway between 1973 and 1975. We know when construction of the Northern section (M66) started which was August 1975

Take a look at the entry on Roads.org
https://www.roads.org.uk/motorway/m66 wrote: An eastern bypass for Bury had been proposed in the 1949 Roads Plan for Lancashire, a vision set out by James Drake, the father of the motorway. Back then, of course, it was only envisaged as an austere, post-war affair; two modest carriageways at ground level of the sort that wouldn't leave too big a dent in your ration book. By the sixties, Lancashire was living the Buck Rogers dream of the motorway, and the Bury Eastern Bypass was suddenly a blue line.

This probably came as something of a surprise to the residents of Ferngrove, a street in the east of Bury, which was built in the post-war years with a wide grassy space in the middle designed to accommodate a by-pass (note the hyphen in "by-pass": this indicates its down-to-earth austerity). The grassy space got its road, but the finished product is not what was described to the people who lived in the houses overlooking it. Instead the M66 screams through the middle of the estate on high concrete walls, with sound barriers at first floor level, and with no opportunity to see the houses on one side of Ferngrove from the other. There are several urban motorways in the UK, and the ones in city centre locations draw all sorts of criticism, but this forgotten bit of urban roadbuilding is far and away the worst of them, and it's all the more shocking for being in what was obviously once a quiet and green suburb.

The gap through the housing estate is only just wide enough for the motorway and, despite this being the steepest part of the long ascent, there's no space for a climbing lane until the road has cleared the houses and is nearly at the top of the hill, where it clearly isn't much use. All things considered, this whole situation is a compromise on a magnificent scale, and it really does prove that tired old maxim that a compromise just means that everyone loses.

Construction timeline
Open Junctions Section
Aug 1975 J3-M60 Bury Eastern Bypass (south)
May 1978 J0-3 Bury Eastern Bypass (north)
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Johnathan404 »

KeithW wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 19:34 There was no road on the 1939 1: 2500 map, there is a gap where a road can go and a footpath.
There was no road on the 1960 1: 2500 map either just some earthworks
Seeing as the "road" I was talking about throughout was very clearly Ferngrove (initially spelt Fern Grove), you appear to be suggesting that the houses were built in the 1930s but were not connected to any road until beyond the 1960s.

I think I'll stick to reading what the map shows. I'm quite happy with the scale of it thank you!
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Fluid Dynamics »

Wasn't there a similar situation where a narrow strip of land was left undeveloped through the Paulsgrove estate on the edge of Portsmouth through which the M27 was eventually built.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

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Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 19:46
KeithW wrote: Sun Sep 15, 2019 19:34 There was no road on the 1939 1: 2500 map, there is a gap where a road can go and a footpath.
There was no road on the 1960 1: 2500 map either just some earthworks
Seeing as the "road" I was talking about throughout was very clearly Ferngrove (initially spelt Fern Grove), you appear to be suggesting that the houses were built in the 1930s but were not connected to any road until beyond the 1960s.

I think I'll stick to reading what the map shows. I'm quite happy with the scale of it thank you! historic_roam.png
That road is a residential street built as part of the Fern Grove estate and is still there, we are discussing the northern section of the East Bury bypass which became the M66 and which runs in the gap left between the Fern Grove and the Dicky Bird Estates.

FernGrove
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.60270 ... authuser=0

East Bury bypass aka M66
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.60253 ... authuser=0

I note with some amusement the local access roads either side of the M66 are both called Ferngrove which must really annoy delivery drivers.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Berk »

We know that Google makes mistakes (like putting the same name on two different streets, or if one changes it’s name halfway along).

But the OS?? Then again... 🤔
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by Bryn666 »

Both sides are called Ferngrove because they are linked via an underpass at the top meaning it is one continuous street.

A very similar gap was left in the suburbs for the M62 at what's now J17, only that was never wide enough and houses had to be demolished. There's still the amusing "half a semi" next to the J17 roundabout on the north side which really gives the game away. It joins right up against a subway ramp.
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Re: M66 and the Dicky Bird council estate

Post by KeithW »

Berk wrote: Mon Sep 16, 2019 00:41 We know that Google makes mistakes (like putting the same name on two different streets, or if one changes it’s name halfway along).

But the OS?? Then again... 🤔
There are streets that change their name halfway along even when its a short distance. Cambridgeshire seems to make it a speciality.
Come down Huntingdon Road in Cambridge and it changes its name at the A1134 junction to Castle Street. Carry on down to the lights on the ring road and go straight across and you are on Magdalene Street, cross the Cam and you find yourself on Bridge Street. Carry on down Bridge Street and immediately after the intersection with Jesus Lane it becomes Sydney Street.

Here in Gamlingay
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Gam ... authuser=0

Driving north up the B1040 and take a right up Honey Hill and as you pass the cemetery it magically becomes Stocks Lane.
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