Widest road in Britain, 1936
The Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead looks pretty much like any other trading estate in Britain. But it was the first.
It cost £2m to build and was meant to reinvigorate this corner of North East England.
The road in this picture – called Kingsway – is still there. It’s now a four lane race track. Not literally, you understand. There are no black and white chequered flags or finishing lines but it’s still a race track.
Building wide new roads from scratch, for heavy use by trucks and light use by cars, was novel at the time, as was the use of high-quality, thick asphalt.