Відео

Tailgating was impossible, then. Brake checking was never heard of.

Just short 1100 ft to the bottom. Surveyors were on site in April 2024 with a camera suspended through the inspection borehole let into the concrete cap. Visibility centred in a 16ft diameter shaft full of turbid water and in total darkness was not great, but masonry and pipework could be made out. Amazing.

How deep is it?

Evocative to think my grandfather went down that shaft in 1918

Shame its not like that now

How scary the motorway looks without central crash barriers. Like the 'Peak' at the end, too.

Looks like the site of the former Betley Road station at the end

Thanks for the video my grandmother's brother died in that disaster

Thanks for the video I live not far from this memorial regards from an ex miner rest in peace one and all 🕊️🙏🕊️ 🙏🕊️🙏

The good old days. It would be nice to see a few more police cars on the roads and not just the motorways 🤣

Wow. What a find. So all that old telephone pole stuff and the old I beam girders and the like were from previous attempts to cap the shaft temporarily previously? Good job the water table was/is so high or else that hole could've been really deadly to nearby walkers.

Thank you for sharing this harrowing story. My Grandfather worked his whole life in the Durham coalfield, often hacking coal from an eighteen inch high face, lying in stinking water for hours, but never complaining of the hand he had been dealt. We are too quick to forget just how lucky we are in this fleeting moment we call life.

Always loved this beautiful theme from the mid 60's !

I loved watching this every year as a child in the 1950's, the parade seemed endless !

It took for ever to complete the Midlands section and when they did the people who lived around it used it as a serris of bypasses. You had to pick the right time to peel pf the M1 and head for Wales via Shrewsbury. no M54 ,that came in odd sections too. God bless the old A5

No middle barriers.

If only it was like that today! Heaven

Wow!!! The good old days when you could get out of 2nd gear on the M6

If only it was still like this, it would make my life a lot easier. Now of course the M6 is just one big roadworks making it into the new highly dangerous 'smart' motorway all the way up. I think you can change smart to dumb in this case as it has taken years to do and people are getting killed due to the lack of hard shoulder.

A long time ago yet that long ago at all

Thank you for this. Great film. Great days back then. 👍🇬🇧

Can’t be the M6, there’s no bollards.

Oh look a hard shoulder and hardly any vehicles

Regular motorway traffic then, still less than in a present day lockdown

No Audio...disjointed video...but Old and rear video...great to see....save it for posterity

3:20 Windows wall paper, so that is where they got it from....

I live on the M6 (Nantwich Junction 16)

Good old days, where the Tarmac was Thick and Hard, not like these days, thin layer

I live just off junction 10 and starting to hate this piece of tarmac with a passion

I can remember frequent trips up and down the M6 (Birmingham to Carnforth) mid 60’s with my dad , occasionally stopping at Keele services, hoping to see the odd E type flash past at warp speed , the yellow loading shovel is a Weatherill 12H 😎

That’s Titch Dougmore driving the Ashley Plant machine.

Ty for helping me with the history work I was supposed to have done last week.... :]

This looks so crap I mean look at the sand the cars it’s so so weird to today’s cars

*The M6, is now a smart motorway with you being able to use the hard shoulder as a stop thing it doesn’t look like this anymore it looks way different*

Apparently it was 359 yards or 1077 feet deep. 155 men and boys were killed there in an explosion on the 12th January 1918. There had been previous explosions resulting in loss of live in the years prior to the 1915 disaster. I'm surprised it wasn't back filled before it was capped.

The mk 2 jaguar rules...

Very light traffic of course - depends on what time of the day ...

Thank you for sharing this - I have always imagined that there is an empty shaft plunging to the depths of the earth under that cap, but it appears to be flooded almost to ground level! What an amazing job they did back then! (I say back then, but it doesn't seem very long ago!)

Looks a bit like that now in that area with the removal of the central crash barrier as they upgrade to a smart motorway