Daily archives: July 1, 2024

When the ‘London-Yorkshire Motorway’ (the M1) was being designed in the mid-1950s, the plan was for the whole stretch across the Trent near Sawley to be an elevated viaduct of 40ft high arches, – 20 arches north of the Trent and 20 to the south – so as not to block the flood plain. Then, in 1957, a scale model of the whole area was built at the Government Hydraulics Research Station at Wallingford, Berks.  The model represented about 5½ miles of the Trent and 1½ miles of the Derwent valleys, including bridges, flood banks etc.  The model covered 3,200ft2 (298m2); an area equivalent area to about 1.15 tennis courts, or (in old money) 14.5 London buses. Water was released across the model to represent a real-world flow of 35,000 cubic feet per second (991.09 m³/s) – the worst flood in recent history – which covered the valley to a depth of 3ft over a width of 8,000ft.   The object of the modelling was to ensure that building the motorway would not cause the flood level upstream to rise more than another 3 inches.   The scientists found that the arches would be far less effective south of the Trent […]