The Farm in the Middle of a Motorway
By RasmaSandra
@RasmaSandra (84621)
Daytona Beach, Florida
November 18, 2020 8:24pm CST
I thought this was interesting enough to share with you. Can you imagine if your had a farm and it wound up in the middle of a motorway?
Along the M62 motorway that is on the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire in England, you come to the junctions 22 and 23. Suddenly you see that there is a farm right in the middle of the roadway. The farm sits between multi-lane roads with cars zooming by it on both sides.
Back in the late 1960s, the M62 motorway was built on the moors above Huddersfield. When the engineers came to the farmhouse that is known as Stott Hall Farm they attempted not to destroy it, Soon as the motorway opened to traffic this became a curiosity as motorists speed by the farm. One of the reasons this happened is that the owner refused to sell his land and the second is that engineers discovered a geological fault beneath the farm.
The way the folks at the farm get out on the road is through private access via an underpass. The fences on the farm keep the livestock in. They have placed trees along their property for some privacy and have added triple glazed windows to keep the noise of the traffic out, The farm provides a habitat for key bird species and helps to restore a peatland bog which helps to lock away carbon and also helps in the fight against climate change. If you lived on the farm you could sit by and wave at the motorists speeding along,
You can read some more about it here
Stott Hall Farm is sandwiched between the westbound and eastbound lanes of the motorway on high Pennine moorlands near Smammonden, West Yorkshire.
9 people like this
8 responses
@LindaOHio (187869)
• United States
19 Nov 20
That's just a crime! I would have sold out.
3 people like this
@BelleStarr (61411)
• United States
25 Nov 20
I don't blame them for not wanting to sell their farm.
2 people like this
@Dreamerby (7969)
• Calcutta, India
19 Nov 20
Interesting engineering. I love the way they get out of their house; although it is cumbersome for them. Thanks for sharing!
2 people like this
@innertalks (22685)
• Australia
24 Nov 20
I actually admire these types of people that stick it out like that.
Mostly here in Australia, the council puts up the rates so high, that these types are eventually forced out, as they cannot afford to stay there anymore.
Many market-gardeners, have been forced to abandon their properties here too, and the rich soil is then covered over with concrete house-block slabs instead.
Here is a link to a lady in China who stuck it out too. I do not think that they built her her own tunnel though. She looks walled in all around.
A woman repeatedly refused to move house, so a motorway bridge was built around her dwelling.
@RasmaSandra (84621)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
24 Nov 20
It is even worse for people in big cities like where I lived in NYC some of the buildings the owners would not sell and let knock down so there are people living with the highways passing right by their windows @Innertalks I remember driving by on the highway and looking right into the window of an apartment I don't even know how they can breathe,
1 person likes this
@innertalks (22685)
• Australia
24 Nov 20
@RasmaSandra The privacy would be a concern too. I would hate millions of passerby's looking into my window.
Here, the Government can "compulsorily acquire" houses, and forcibly remove the stubborn owners too.
They did that here with about 90 houses flagged in the path of a proposed new freeway, but then a change of Government happened, and the project was scrapped altogether.
The state lost billions of dollars, because of the reneging on the contract, not to mention the millions already paid out for those houses already now too, which are all left now as white elephants, unoccupied.
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