Earthworks manager, 80, remembers ‘tough job’
A Lanarkshire octogenarian has recalled the work carried out more than 50 years ago to prepare the M74 motorway in the Hamilton area.
Earthworks agent Lawrie Taylor, of Bothwell, now aged 80, supervised 200 men comprising truck drivers, bulldozer drivers and labourers on the stretch from Hamilton services to Kirkmuirhill.
The excavation workers would get the roadworks ready for the asphalt to be applied.
Mr Taylor organised the earthworks for consortium Christiani-shand along the 10-mile section from 1964 until it opened in 1966.
He said this week:“this was the first motorway in Scotland. The Hamilton-motherwell interchange was the biggest in Britain in terms of land area. Up till then it had only really been the Preston bypass and the M1 up to the Watford Gap.”
The labourers involved would work daily from 8am to 5pm and 8am to 8pm in the summer months. Material excavated at Larkhall was moved from there to build the earthworks on the Clyde floodplane at the Hamiltonmotherwell interchange.
Mr Taylor added:“at that time there was no road from Hamilton and Motherwell to the Raith Interchange area.
“You couldn’t even walk it. It was a swamp which was flooded regularly by the Clyde.
“The Palace Bing at Bothwellhaugh was removed and material placed along the line of the motorway between Raith and the Hamilton and Motherwell Road.
“We shifted, in all, 16,000,000 tons of material comprising earth, old coal bings and rock.
“It was very exciting because it had never been done in Scotland before, not to that degree.
“There was quite a lot of camaraderie. Motorway construction workers were a bit like a family.
“Men would arrive carrying shovels looking for work. A good navvy was expected to shift one ton of dry material – like gravel or stone – in an hour.
“There was very little hydraulic equipment used because hydraulics were in their infancy. “It was a tough job.” Mr Taylor also pointed out that an experimental concrete carriageway, the first in Scotland, was laid down on the southbound route from Ferniegair to the Lanark turn-off.
He said:“i think it was removed about 10 years ago, but it lasted a lot longer than expected.”
Following his stint on the M74, Mr Taylor went on to work on the M1 at Durham, the M6 at Kendal and the M62 at Manchester and other civil engineering projects.