How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

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RJDG14
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How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by RJDG14 »

My Northern Irish grandad let me have his old maps the other day as he's no longer permitted to drive, and among them is a Johnson & Bacon "Nu-Way Touring Map" of Ireland with a copyright date of 1974. What struck me was that despite this map having been published well into the start of the Troubles, it shows the unbuilt stretch of the Northern Irish M2 between Antrim and Ballymena in a complete state, and it's not marked as proposed or under construction. It's possible that the section hadn't yet been completely shelved at this point but I still find it a little weird that it appears on this map as a complete stretch of road when it still hasn't been built in 2020 (although the A26 has since been dualled). The map doesn't show any stretch of the M2 between Ballymena and Coleraine, where I believe it was originally intended it would terminate, though. This map also shows the Dungannon bypass as a complete section of the M1, when I'm pretty certain that only the most eastern half mile or so had been built at this point and the road remained this way until the early 1980s. I also have a Bartholemew map from 1977 which shows the yet to be finished bypass in its entirety as under construction.

An earlier 1970 version of the 1977 Bartholemew Antrim - Donegal quarter inch map which I also have seems to show both the northern and southern sections of the A6 Castledawson bypass as under construction when only the northern section was being built at this time, with the southern section only opening in 1992. I believe there was originally, however, a short motorway-standard stub at the east of the Castledawson roundabout which was intended as the original terminus for the M22.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by B1040 »

Back in the 70s when I first got interested in maps, and used to go to Smith's map department while my parents shopped elsewhere, I soon realised that the quality of J &B mapping was much lower than that of most cartographers.
I cannot answer your questions about the NI roads programme.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by RJDG14 »

B1040 wrote: Thu Aug 26, 2021 12:29 Back in the 70s when I first got interested in maps, and used to go to Smith's map department while my parents shopped elsewhere, I soon realised that the quality of J &B mapping was much lower than that of most cartographers.
I cannot answer your questions about the NI roads programme.
It's not a particularly good map, especially in comparison with my old OS maps which tended to be the most accurate. I suspect the person making the map hadn't been to Northern Ireland and may have relied on outdated sources that made them assume that a planned (but unbuilt) section of the M2 was there when it wasn't.

Something I also noticed in one of the c.1968 Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland maps I now have would be that J12 of the Northern Irish M1 appears as an at-grade roundabout despite the fact that it also depicts the M1 being complete to the west as far as the temporary terminus at Tamnamore. The map appears to be on SABRE Maps and here is what I'm talking about:

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/ind ... 13&layer=6

All of the other motorway roundabouts on the map are shown as being grade separated, so was this probably a mapping error, especially since the roundabout may have been an earlier terminus and it may not have been grade separated then, or was the Northern Irish M1 for a brief period divided in two by an at-grade junction here?
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by IJP1 »

If I were a betting man (which, admittedly, I'm not) I'd put fairly good money on a mapping error there.

The M1 briefly did stop around J12 (although I didn't think it actually did right at it - I've family in the area), at which time there may have been a roundabout terminus. So it may be just that they hadn't updated it from previous when the extra junctions were built.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by bothar »

On the subject of mapping errors, the OSI Monaghan sheet recently uploaded shows a reappearance of the NI B110. This road had the B110 number in sequence, but sometime in the 1940s on NI maps its became the B210, perhaps this was designed to confuse German spies, but was likely an error of some sort. The fact that the OSI didn't know about the change suggests that the official list of roads, such as it was, did not change. On the equivalent NI half inch map dated 1968 it is the B210.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by Owain »

Wow - great finds! Thanks for sharing those.

Besides the motorways, I notice that the A6 loses its primary status at the junction with the primary A31.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by A42_Sparks »

RJDG14 wrote: Wed Aug 25, 2021 21:22 My Northern Irish grandad let me have his old maps the other day as he's no longer permitted to drive, and among them is a Johnson & Bacon "Nu-Way Touring Map" of Ireland with a copyright date of 1974. What struck me was that despite this map having been published well into the start of the Troubles, it shows the unbuilt stretch of the Northern Irish M2 between Antrim and Ballymena in a complete state, and it's not marked as proposed or under construction. It's possible that the section hadn't yet been completely shelved at this point but I still find it a little weird that it appears on this map as a complete stretch of road when it still hasn't been built in 2020 (although the A26 has since been dualled). The map doesn't show any stretch of the M2 between Ballymena and Coleraine, where I believe it was originally intended it would terminate, though.
The NI motorway programme was drastically scaled back in 1975 but I believe it was 1980 before the plug was finally pulled on the M2 Antrim-Ballymena section. Regarding the Ballymena-Coleraine section, both myself and nirs looked into this some years ago and as far as I can remember no evidence of a detailed route for the motorway was ever found. Perhaps a definitive route never existed beyond a rough line on a map to the west of the A26.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by A42_Sparks »

Fantastic! Thanks for those.

One of those maps shows a completely different route for the M22 (erroneously labelled M2) west of Randalstown. It goes north of the old A6 (now B183) instead of south like the new A6 DC! I was under the impression that the new A6 between Randalstown and Toome was on the planned route of the M22.

The other two show the proposed route for the M2 between Antrim and Ballymena. A speculative comment I made on SABRE about 15 years ago has now become Wikipedia fact: The unbuilt Junction 8 was for Kells and Connor and Junction 9 for a future Ballymena southern bypass.

I now wish to retract this comment as, thanks to Truvelo providing me with a copy of the 1967 Ballymena New Town plan, I discovered that the 'future Ballymena southern bypass' was actually the proposed Western Distributor which was supposed to connect to A26 Seven Towers roundabout.

Therefore I now think that junction 8 would have been with the B53 south of Kells and junction 9 would have been with the B98 west of Kells also giving access to the Western Distributor via the A26. Two junctions with B-roads may have been overkill but I can see nowhere else for the two missing junctions to be. In summary:

j7 the M2/M22 split
j8 B53 Kells, Randalstown
j9 B98 Kells (A26 Ballymena)
j10 Larne Road roundabout
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by RJDG14 »

My map shows the unbuilt M2 slightly less directly parallel to the A26 - it runs in a very slightly more north-northwest direction than what's shown in these images, but at the same time, the A26 is also depicted on a less accurate route to what those maps show. I don't think the Johnston & Bacon maps were particularly accurate.

While the copyright on the map I have isn't technically due to expire until at least 2048, I don't think anybody would sue if I was just to show this small fragment from it (the unbuilt M2 segment plus a tiny bit of adjoining motorway and nothing else).

I've noticed that one of those photos on Flickr also shows the whole of the Dungannon bypass under construction as a motorway (the same happens to be the case on my map), when a short stretch of the eastern half had already been built with the eastwards stretch of the M1, and the rest was eventually built in the early 1980s to a WS2 standard as part of the A4. This is how the unopened eastern stub from the M1 of the Dungannon bypass looked shortly before the bypass had been opened:

https://www.geograph.ie/photo/3374186
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by Enceladus »

Growing up as a child in the 1980s we had a Geographia road atlas of Ireland from circa 1980 that showed the line of the unbuilt M2 between Antrim and Ballymena as “projected” motorway.

The maps linked in this thread are very interesting - I had never seen the planned M3, M7, M4 and M5 NI motorway routes on general road maps before.

I always have found the Michelin road maps to be among the best in this regard they not only show new road construction more accurately than other maps, but the planned opening date as well.
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Re: How many maps from the 1960s/1970s are there that show unbuilt roads in Northern Ireland?

Post by bothar »

While there are later maps which show phantom motorways, it is notable that the 1965 NI map recently uploaded does not show the M1 at all, although the section close to Belfast was built then.
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