Tuesday 23 May 2023

We Have Often Featured Farms And Other Buildings In Strange Places,

but I did not until today realise that the UK has a unique farm,


photograph Richard Harvey/Wikimedia Commons, and when I say unique, Stott Hall Farm is the only farm in the world built right in the middle of a busy motorway, with crash barriers and a fence around it to keep livestock in and out-of-control vehicles out, the farm is located the M62 motorway connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull in Northern England, and despite the traffic with its triple glazed windows life in the farmhouse is remarkably quiet, even more so as their farm houses’ occupants closest friends live about half an hour’s drive away, so popping in for a tea and a chat takes a bit of time! But why did the farms owners when the motorway was being built sell out?

the fact is they were never offered the choice, in 1983, the owners of Stott Hall Farm were never actually asked to sell their land, during construction of the M62 motorway back in the 1960s, engineers determined that, because of a geological fault on the property, it was more practical to build the roadways around the farm, than over it, so they just allowed the owners to stay, “A geological fault beneath the farmhouse meant it was more practical for engineers to leave it rather than blast through and destroy it,” journalist Michael Clegg confirms, The current owners, Jill Falkingham-Thorp, her husband Paul, and her son John William, told Manchester’s Finest that the farm has surprisingly low levels of pollution for a place located in the middle of a motorway, just goes to show how efficient car, coach and lorry engines now are at not polluting the air, (but do not tell the lunatics that are protesting against internal combustion engines, they would have a fit!), not my ideal home, but there it is, a unique farm and house that the new owners call home.


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