20 Facts About the Early Days of the M1

The Automobile Association recently posted this priceless film contrasting the Kenneth Kendall-narrated promotion of 1959 with the M1 of 2024: 

And so here are 20 facts about the early days of the M1: 

1) A Daily Mirror reporter, visiting the M1 a few weeks before it opened on the 2nd of November 1959, found it “so strange it was hard to believe I was still in England”.

2) Work commenced on the M1 on the 24th of March 1958, when Harold Watkinson, the Minister of Transport, pressed a button.

3) That year there were approximately 7 million vehicles in the UK – a 250% increase from 1950 – and one-third of households had access to a car while hire purchase meant Ford Consul or Hillman Minx ownership was within easier reach.

4) A Ministry of Transport survey also discovered that 56% of all freight went by road.

5) On the day of the opening ceremony, The Guardian pointed out: “A hundred years ago our Victorian ancestors could build 400 miles of railway in a year: in twelve years since the post-war plan for motorways was announced in 1947 we have contrived to build eighty miles of new motor road.”

6) To deal with the traffic on the first stretch of the M1, between St Albans and Rugby, the Automobile Association employed special ‘Road Patrols’ in Land Rovers and Ford Escort 100Es. These carried “over 100 items of equipment to help motorists in difficulties”.

7) The AA says: “During the first year, 20,000 motorists used the M1 each day – today it’s between 130,000 and 140,000 a day. Fourteen thousand drivers were assisted on the M1 in its first year of operation by a special fleet of AA Land Rover patrols coordinated from a special Mobile Operations Centre at Newport Pagnell.”

8) The Duke of Edinburgh chauffeured the Queen along the M1 in his Lagonda 3-Litre.

9) Rather less glamorously, the AA, the RAC and the police frequently dealt with blown engines, worn tyres and badly maintained cars.

10) On the M1’s opening day, the Automobile Association had to be called out around every six minutes.

11) The M1 originally had maintenance depots at approximately 15-mile intervals to keep the highway clear of debris.

12) There was no motorway speed limit until 1965, and Watkinson’s successor, Ernest Marples, stated: “I have never seen anyone going so fast and ignoring the rules and regulations.”

13) Grand Prix racer Tony Brooks wrote in The Observer of the 8th of November 1959: “This broad six-lane throughway, divorced from the countryside, divorced from the towns and villages, kills the image of a tight little island full of hamlets and pubs.”

14) However, Brooks also regarded the M1 as “an unsafe road by American standards” with a lack of a proper barrier between traffic streams, fog warnings and even cat’s eyes. There were also soft verges rather than hard shoulders.

15) The constabularies jointly responsible for policing the M1 used a fleet of Ford Zephyr Mk.2s with estate car bodywork from E.D. Abbott of Farnham. Their white liveries and blue flashing beacons were highly unusual to the average British motorist in 1959.

16) The Zephyrs carried a puncture repair kit, a dozen cones, a tow chain, red-domed battery lamps, a first aid kit, orange waistcoats, a broom and a shovel, a fire extinguisher, warning signs and a spare tin of petrol.

17) It was not unknown in the early days of UK motorways for the police to encounter motorists attempting to U-turn, pedestrians trying to hitchhike along the hard shoulder and drivers reversing up the slip road.

18) Drivers were warned the motorway was no place for “ditherers”.

19) There were also grumpy reports that weekend motorists turned the M1 into “a sightseers’ traffic jamboree”.

20) Ernest Marples allegedly exclaimed: “What have I started!”

With thanks to the Automobile Association for their time and permission to use the images in this blog.

https://www.theaa.com/about-us/newsroom/m1-celebrates-65-years