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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
National
Damon Wilkinson

"It's bl**dy frustrating": 'Forgotten' village where 'you can't open the windows'

Dorothy Turton gestures towards the front window of the shop that's been in her family for three generations. "I've had triple glazing put in, but you can still hear the noise," she says.

A few feet away a constant stream of cars and HGVs thunder through the village of Hollingworth on the one of the busiest and most controversial roads in Greater Manchester. If everything had gone to plan, work on the long-awaited Mottram Bypass should have begun by now.

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But the £223m project, which has been 50 years in the making, faced yet another setback earlier this year after environmental charity the Campaign for Rural England lodged a legal challenge. Construction was due to start this spring, but a judicial review is now required, meaning a delay of 'several months'.

But in Hollingworth there's conflicting views on whether the by-pass will even make a difference. Around 25,000 vehicles a day, including 2,000 HGVs, travel through the small village.

Most of the cars and lorries are using the Woodhead and Snake Passes between Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire. And they get funnelled into a hectic junction close to homes, shops and a primary school at the western end of the village.

For residents who live there, the relentless traffic affects the houses they live in and the air they breathe.

Dorothy Turton (Staff)

Mrs Turton, 75, was born above her family's stationary shop on Market Street and raised her own two sons there. "I cannot have the door open because of the noise and dust," she said. "I have put some books outside for sale in aid of the church today, but they'll be covered in dust by the end of the day.

"Both my sons suffer from asthma and there's never been asthma in the family before. When they were little we used to live here above the shop, but we couldn't have the windows open.

"The traffic is terrible. Even on a Sunday it's bad.

"It's more or less chokka block every day. You just need an accident or a little bit of road works and the traffic almost goes all the way to Sheffield."

Proposed plans for the bypass (National Highways)

But despite the problems Mrs Turton says she has 'mixed feelings' about the bypass. Under the plans a dual-carriageway would bypass Mottram in Longendale from the M67 to Mottram Moor, while another link road would take traffic away from Woolley Lane onwards to Glossop and Snake Pass.

But traffic heading to and from Woodhead Pass would still travel through Hollingworth.

"It won't help us here in the village, some people think it will actually make the traffic worse," said Mrs Turton. "And I don't want it to go through the green belt.

I've opposed it in the past because I think there should be traffic restrictions instead. I just want the cars and lorries to go around - keep them on the motorways!"

On Market Street some houses stand less than 6ft away from the road. As lorries rumble past their front doors the noise is deafening.

Lorries and cars stand bumper to bumper alongside houses on Market Street, Hollingworth (Manchester Evening News)

Sarah Denton works on the village Post Office on Market Street. "The traffic is awful and it's getting worse," she said "It's pretty much constant throughout the day.

"There's a grid outside and when the lorries go through it's like an earthquake. We've had bottles fall off the shelf before.

"I used to live in a place where there was no traffic, then I came here and it was like 'Oh my God'."

Sarah, who moved to Hollingworth around five years ago from nearby Ashton, doubts the by-pass will ever be built. "It's just never going to happen is it?," she said.

"I remember being tiny and my mum and dad telling me about it and it's still not happened."

Seana Craven has run the village café for 11 years and drives into work each morning from her home in Denton. "I don't want a bypass because of [the impact on] all the wildlife and it would be bad for trade to be honest," she said. "The traffic's not that bad unless there's roadworks or there's been an accident.

"I set off from home at 6.45am and I'm always here for 7am."

'The traffic is awful and it's getting worse' (Staff)

Vivien Dawes, 80, whose Market Street home is just a few feet away from the traffic, described the bypass delay as 'ridiculous'.

"We have been waiting 50 years for something to be done," she said. "The traffic has got worse in the last five years and it's not just the lorries.

"It's only a small village, but they keep building all these estates and it just means more cars. It takes 30 minutes to get out of the village and 30 minutes to come back - you have to add an hour on wherever you're going."

One of Mrs Dawes' neighbours, who asked not to be named, said she worried about the health risks of living so close to the busy road. "When the grandchildren come at they're just at the right height to be breathing in all the s*** and pollution," she said.

"There's a school across the road. The windows are filthy all the time. It's impossible to keep them clean. There's just no let up at all."

Brian Butler (Staff)

Plans to bypass Hollingworth were once on the cards. The original proposals were for a 3.5 mile link road from Mottram to Tinwistle.

But in 2007 those plans were shelved when the Highways Agency said it was 'not a priority'.

Brian Butler was vice chair of the now defunct Longendale Siege Committee, a pressure group set up to campaign for a bypass, and has twice visited 10 Downing Street to hand over petitions.

"I wonder if we get forgotten about because we're on the fringe of Greater Manchester, out on the edge of Derbyshire," he said. "When you see the state of this road and all the traffic, it's bloody frustrating.

"I used to drive all over the country with work and I hardly ever saw villages of this size, because you went round them on a bypass.

"I have sympathy with the viewpoint of the environmentalists, but what they need to consider is that this is the people's environment. It's just as important.

"Building a by-pass would make a vast difference, there's no two ways about it."

The proposed Mottram Bypass (Highways England)

In a statement earlier this year, CPRE said the bypass would 'increase traffic through the Peak District National Park, harming public enjoyment of its landscapes and tranquillity'. It added: "It will do nothing to relieve the noise, pollution and intimidation which blights the lives of the people who live along the trunk road through Hollingworth and Tintwistle, where lorries thunder past their doorsteps, rattling their windows.

"The scheme would emit thousands of tons of carbon dioxide. Yet we are in a climate and nature emergency when emissions need to reduce urgently."

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