Simon English
England Revisited

On a fence under the M5 M6 intersection complex near Walsall.

On a metal security fence beside a road under the elevated section of the M5-M6 intersection. In 1971 this was a new simple wooden post and rail fence but in the intervening years change of use has necessitated a more secure enclosure, the occupants of the field behind needing much more protection from the increased volume of passing traffic and vandalism than those of years ago. I gather it was a pig and chicken farm then, now it is grazing land for the horses and ponies of a riding stable.

The River Tame flows under the motorways and through the small field by point 43. This is low lying land between the built up areas of Charlemont and Newton. These conurbations are on higher land presumably in the past the valley bottom was not attractive to building leaving a strip of small farms and fields between the expanding towns. This open land has over last two hundred years been used as a corridor for the canals, railway line, national electricity grid pylons and now the motorway network.

This section of the M5 & M6 was opened in 1970. I assume that when going through an urban area that so many bridges need to be built or under existing structures that it is simpler to build the whole lot as an elevated section. Here, where the two motorways join, a large area of land is enclosed by a triangle of flyover and embankment. Within this triangle is a sewage treatment plant and at the southern tip of the triangle the remaining bit of ‘agricultural’ land.

When I visited this point in 1971 with my cousin it was late evening and navigating with a photocopy of a 1 inch to a mile map in the complex urban land between Wolverhampton and Birmingham. Unlike countryside where one has landmarks and few roads here we were in a maze of streets and somehow got disorientated under the new elevated motorway intersection. The original calculated grid reference I should have been just over a mile north. This was the only serious navigational error of the original journey.
Points 42 & 43