Scammonden Bridge

The bridge was built for the West Riding County Council to the designs of the county surveyor, Colonel S. Maynard Lovell. In March 1962 a model of the 37 mi section of the M62 was displayed in Wakefield, the administrative centre of the West Riding County Council. The route of the motorway, from the A572 to the A640 at Huddersfield, was announced by Tom Fraser on 29 October 1964. On opening, it was believed to be one of the largest concrete single spans in Europe. The bridge had high winds; pedestrians found it sometimes hard to walk along it, so a new type of road sign, for high winds, was installed. The £8m contract was given in late October 1966.

The bridge was planned as a flat arch bridge, but aerodynamic considerations led to an open spandrel design. The main span supports eight spandrel columns and there are four other columns over the motorway cutting. The spandrel columns are 18 in thick. The arch is a twin box section. Its deck is an inverted T-type pretensioned prestressed concrete beam. The bridge deck is 24 ft wide. Using computers, its design was calculated to withstand 110 mph winds, and was tested in wind tunnels at the University of Nottingham and the National Physical Laboratory. The motorway cutting was profiled with 15 ft 'steps'. The road it carried was the A6025, but is now the B6114 between Elland and the A640…