The M1 Motorway runs parallel to the old Roman road known as Watling Street.   The Minister for Transport Ernest Marples opened the south section, from St Albans to Birmingham, on 2nd November 1959 . The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner took a dim view of its bridge architecture, which he said 'impresses by a cyclopean rudeness rather than by elegance'.   He criticized the abacus that surmounts the supporting columns for trying to impress permanence, which he saw as 'a doubtful quality in devices connected with vehicles and means of transport'. (see Northamptonshire, in The Buildings of England series by N Pevsner, Yale University Press; 1973).   Never the less, in its heyday the motorway established Northamptonshire as the distribution centre of the UK, and was considered an icon of modernity.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had been formed in the previous year in response to the threat of nuclear inhalation posed by the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction.   Maybe because of this dark cloud, in 1959 popular music continued to produce such exuberant tracks as Eddie Cochran's 'C'mon Everybody' and Chuck Berry's 'Almost Grown'.