On This Day

Saturday 29th October 1960

59 years ago

The Stretford-Eccles bypass, the first local authority motorway in the UK, was opened to traffic. It formed the first section of an Outer Ring Road of Manchester, which was subsequently numbered the M63, then the M60 (J7 to J3). Construction of the 5 mile By-pass, which included a total of 22 bridges, started in April 1957 when work began on the first of several contracts. This section runs from the Worsley Interchange (what is now Junction 13 of the M60) as far as the junction with the A56 at Chester Road (now junction 7 of the M60). This section includes the Barton High Level Bridge, a bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal. The embankments for the bridge were the first physical step towards the construction of any motorway in the UK. With the extension of the M62 west to Liverpool, the section from the Eccles Interchange down to Stretford was redesignated M63. The junctions were numbered in the opposite direction to the current M60 numbering, with M63 junction 1 being the Eccles Interchange, running to junction 7 at Chester Road. Originally there was no junction 6.