View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane, 16 October 1995
View west from Marsh Lane to Sandy Lane (see all photos of the same view)
Between Sandy Lane and Marsh Lane, the motorway runs almost at ground level, and without earthworks to build, work has started early on constructing the road bed. In the distance, a first course of tarmac has been laid for a short length.
Structure 16 (Sandy Lane overbridge)
Structure 17 (Marsh Lane overbridge)
Structure 17a (Marsh Farm overbridge)
What's new
The monster seen from below
What might it have been like to stand in one spot and witness the arrival, and the uncertainty, of plans for an urban motorway in West London?
The road that made no sense
It was the UK's only single-carriageway motorway, and twenty years ago it ceased to exist. This is the story of the strange fascination it held, and of my place in history.
The forever bottleneck, part 2
The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.
Have you seen...
M4 Chiswick-Langley
An early triumph of the motorway programme, the M4 between Chiswick and Langley linked Central London to Heathrow - then still known as London Airport - and was the start of a new motorway west.
