Preston By-pass Preston By-pass The Preston Bypass was Britain’s first motorway. It was designed and engineered by Lancashire County Council surveyor James Drake as part of a larger initiative to create a north-south motorway network that would later form part of the M6 motorway. The bypass was opened on 5 December 1958 by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Nearly £3 million was spent in its construction. The original -mile () motorway ran around the east side of Preston between Bamber Bridge (now the M6, Junction 29) and Broughton (now the M55, Junction 1) and crosses over the River Ribble at Samlesbury at
M6 motorway to the edge of the Lake District with a short stretch within the national park boundaries and then passes Carlisle on its way to Gretna, before the motorway becomes the A74(M) a few hundred metres (yards) short of the Scottish border. The first section of the motorway and the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass. It was built by Tarmac Construction and opened by the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 5 December 1958. In January 1959 the Preston by-pass was closed because of rapid surface deterioration over a stretch of "due to water freezing and then thawing".