Scammonden Bridge, also known locally as the Brown Cow Bridge (after the nearby Brown Cow Inn, now closed), spans the Deanhead cutting carrying the B6114 (the former A6025) Elland to Buckstones road over the M62 motorway in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. The bridge and Scammonden Reservoir to the west are named after Scammonden, the village that was flooded to accommodate the reservoir whose dam carries the motorway. On opening, the bridge was the longest concrete arch bridge in the UK.[1]
History
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-mile (60 km) 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.[2]
Design
The bridge was planned as a flat arch bridge, but aerodynamic considerations led to an open spandrel design.[3] The main span supports eight spandrel columns and there are four other columns over the motorway cutting. The spandrel columns are 18 inches (46 cm) thick.[4]
The road it carried was the A6025, but is now the B6114 between Elland and the A640 junction at Buckstones Moss. To the west of the bridge the M62 enters Calderdale from Kirklees; the boundary crosses the B6114 north of the bridge, and follows the north side of the M62 along Scammonden Water. The road crosses the M62 at around 1,017 feet (310 m) above sea level, northeast of Cow Gate Hill.
Safety improvements
In 2020 work was carried out to erect permanent, 8 feet (2.4 m) high, inward curving anti-climb fencing on both sides of the bridge, following a number of deaths, in order to prevent suicides.[6] Work began in June, nearly a year after Highways England confirmed they had secured the £1m required to design and build the new structures. The scheme was completed in October 2020.[7]
Construction
Motorway under construction, below Pole Moor, in 1970
The arch is made of modular precast concrete sections, weighing 9,000 tonnes (8,900 long tons). The construction contractor was Alfred McAlpine. Construction of the arch required 70 miles (110 km) of scaffolding tubing. During the winter there was severe ice build up on the scaffolding.
Excavation of the Deanhead cutting was done using explosives; 12,000,000 cubic yards were excavated.[8] The cutting is 150 feet (46 m) deep, 2,600 feet (790 m) long, and 4.6 million cubic yards (3,500,000 m3) of earth was removed during its construction. Most of it was used to build the 249-foot (76 m) high Scammonden Dam across the Black Brook valley, which was the first motorway-dam project in the world.
The route of the carriageway was set out in July 1963 and the motorway cutting began work in August 1964.[9] Work on the six-mile Windy Hill to Pole Moor section began on 1 November 1966 and was carried out for 12 hours on weekdays and eight hours at weekends.
