Half a century of modern motoring
Carriageway ushers in era of fast travel by road
It was at 2pm on Friday, December 2, 1966, that Hamilton’s “magnificent motorway” was officially opened to traffic.
Vehicles began to flow on to the M74 between Hamilton and Blackwood – the first stage of modern motoring in Lanarkshire on the main road south – 13 years after the project was first approved and only 30 months after work on the £8.5million project started.
A few hours earlier, at 11am, the Secretary of State for Scotland, William Ross, had cut the ceremonial ribbon near the £500,000 Avon Bridge.
He said: “This is probably one of the most important days that Scotland has seen in road construction history.
“This road is going to carry commercial traffic from the very heart of industrial Scotland, and is going to support the growth of industry.”
The first nine-mile stretch of dual, two-lane carriageway opened that day at Junction 6, Hamilton and Draffan, south of Larkhall.
And the Hamilton Bypass, which was the most extensive motorway constructed in Scotland at that time, opened to traffic a few days later on December 6, 1966.
It was considered a triumph for contractors Christiani-shand Ltd, who had ran into rough weather, tough country and tons of trouble.
Their worries began at the £2m Hamilton interchange, where seven bridges, four footbridges and the new Avon Bridge covered 100 acres of what was swampland that flooded regularly when the Clyde flooded.
Hundreds of piles were driven and all of the bridges stood on concrete piles, buried 80 to 100 feet deep to ensure they wouldn’t sink.
The seven-span Avon Bridge was an engineering feat in itself. The course of the Avon had to be changed to get more land for the interchange, and the bridge was built over dry land then the river diverted underneath it.
The roughest weather was in 1965, when nearly two days per week were lost to muck-shifting because of the wet weather. Altogether, eight million tons of material had to be handled on the project – rock, clay earth and blaes.
And the motorway wiped six of the shire’s old coal bings off the map. Removal of a million cubic yards transformed the Colville Ross Yard tip into a mini-bing. Planned dumping of waste material also reclaimed farmland from the Clyde, the ground level having been raised eight feet.
The difficult nature of the ground meant cuts had to be blasted through rocks, exposing old mineworks. This was particularly the case at Burnhead Golf Course, Larkhall.
The only straight stretch of the motorway was beyond Burnhead, the rest being gently curved. The straight stretch was half-a-mile long to Swinhill.
Possibly the most attractive part of the road was above Canderside Toll, where the carriageway split. This was deliberate – to avoid monotony for the driver and to retain a fine natural feature – a pine tree clump.
The carriageways joined after this and swept down to Draffan Road End, skirting the A74 that it replaced.
In 1966, the Hamilton Advertiser said of the M74: “It was a fantastic high-speed achievement – nine miles completed in 30 months, including three major interchanges, a river bridge, various small bridges to preserve farm accesses and rightsof-way, and improvements to busy roads like the Hamilton-motherwell A723, Lanark-hamilton A72 and the Ayr-edinburgh A71.”