M62 motorway

The M62 is a long motorway running west to east across Northern England. It links Liverpool on the coast to Hull via Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield. For 11 kilometres it shares its route with the M60 around Manchester. Part of the European route network, it carries the E20 from Shannon to Saint Petersburg and the E22 from Holyhead to Ishim. The motorway was first planned in the 1930s and opened in stages between 1971 and 1976. Engineers led by Sir James Drake and Stuart Maynard Lovell surveyed the route from Worsley to Ledsham. Construction moved from Pole Moor near Huddersfield to Tarbock on Liverpool’s outskirts. Two serious incidents occurred on the motorway: the M62 coach bombing in 1974 and the Great Heck rail crash in 2001. Between Manchester and Leeds the motorway climbs into the Pennines. The highest point, 372 metres above sea level, lies near junction 22 in Calderdale. Stott Hall Farm, an 18th-century building, stands between the carriageways on this stretch. The road crosses the Irwell Valley on a 61-metre-high bridge and passes Scammonden Dam on an embankment. The Pennine section required moving millions of cubic metres of rock and peat to keep the carriageways apart.