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Mott, Hay and Anderson (MHA) was a successful 20th century firm of consulting civil engineers based in the United Kingdom. The company traded until 1989, when it merged with Sir M MacDonald & Partners to form '' Mott MacDonald''.


History


Early years

The company was founded as a private partnership between Basil Mott and David Hay on 30 July 1902. Prior to forming the partnership both had spent time building London tube railways and Hay had worked on the
Blackwall Tunnel The Blackwall Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels underneath the River Thames in east London, England, linking the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and part of the A102 road. The northern portal lies just south ...
, so it was no surprise that they concentrated on heavy civil engineering projects such as bridges, tunnels, railways and docks. Early projects included the reconstruction and extension of the City & South London Railway, the building and extension of the Central London Railway, the construction of lifts beneath
St Mary Woolnoth St Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, located on the corner of Lombard Street, London, Lombard Street and King William Street, London, King William Street near Bank junction. The present building is one of the Commission f ...
church at Bank Underground station, the underpinning of Clifford's Tower, the reconstruction of
Southwark Bridge Southwark Bridge ( ) is an arch bridge in London, for traffic linking the district of Southwark and the City of London, City across the River Thames. Besides when others are closed for temporary repairs, it has the least traffic of the List of ...
and the widening of
Blackfriars Bridge Blackfriars Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Railway Bridge, carrying the A201 road. The north end is in the City of London near the Inns of Court and Temple C ...
. Mott and Hay employed a young engineer called David Anderson as resident engineer for the latter project. The firm also advised on proposals for underground railways in Sydney, Africa and Russia. David Anderson was made a partner in 1920 after returning from army service. The firm was thereafter known as Mott, Hay and Anderson (MHA). During the 1920s, MHA designed the rolling bridge over the river Dee at Queensferry, the Wearmouth Bridge in
Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...
and the
Trent Bridge Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is a cricket ground mostly used for Test cricket, Test, One-day cricket, One-Day International and county cricket located in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, just across the River Trent from the city of Nott ...
in
Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and nor ...
. They also designed the enlargement of the City & South London Railway tunnels and their extension past
Camden Town Camden Town () is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London. Laid out as a residential distri ...
and Clapham South to form the
Northern line The Northern line is a London Underground line that runs between North London and South London. It is printed in black on the Tube map. It carries more passengers per year than any other Underground linearound 340million in 2019making it the bu ...
of
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
. In 1920, Basil Mott joined forces with Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice and John Brodie to advise on the best way to build a new crossing of the river
Mersey The River Mersey () is a major river in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it ...
in Liverpool. In 1922 a tunnel was recommended. Mott, Hay and Anderson subsequently designed the works and supervised the construction of the tunnel. The tunnel, named Queensway was opened in July 1934. In the 1930s, the firm designed the first bolted concrete tunnel linings, for the
London Passenger Transport Board The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for local public transport in London and its environs from 1933 to 1948. In common with all London transport authorities from 1933 to 2000, the public name and brand was Londo ...
. The new tunnel linings were used on the Ilford extension of the Central line between Redbridge and Newbury Park. MHA designed a road tunnel at
Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames Estuary, is Thurrock in ...
and supervised the construction of its pilot tunnel beneath the Thames, but preparations for construction of the full-size tunnel were stopped in 1931 due to economic difficulties. G L Groves became a partner in 1933, but it was decided to leave the name of the company unchanged. In 1935, David Anderson attended the opening ceremony of the
Moscow Metro The Moscow Metro) is a rapid transit system in the Moscow Oblast of Russia. It serves the capital city of Moscow and the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast, Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy, and Kotelniki. Opened in 1935 with one l ...
, which the firm had provided advice to as far back as 1912. Other works in this period included Lots Road power station and construction of escalator tunnels in
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
stations. Both founding partners died in 1938. Normal construction work mostly stopped in September 1939, and during the wartime years MHA acted as engineer for the construction of five of the ten
London deep-level shelters The London deep-level shelters are eight Deep level underground, deep-level air-raid shelters that were built under London Underground stations during World War II. Background Each shelter consists of a pair of parallel tunnels in diameter and ...
, for the construction of armaments factories and for the repair of bomb damage on various British bridges, tunnels and docks. MHA also oversaw the conversion of the unfinished Central line tunnels to aircraft components factories.


After World War II

In the late 1940s, MHA designed road, pedestrian and cycle tunnels under the
River Tyne The River Tyne is a river in North East England. Its length (excluding tributaries) is . It is formed by the North Tyne and the South Tyne, which converge at Warden, Northumberland, Warden near Hexham in Northumberland at a place dubbed 'The ...
(
Tyne Tunnel The Tyne Tunnel is the name given to a pair of two-lane vehicular toll tunnels under the River Tyne in North East England. Originally opened in 1967 and expanded in 2011, the tunnels connect the town of Jarrow on the south bank of the river with ...
) though the road tunnel was not built until the 1960s. Further commissions for road tunnels were received for the revitalised Dartford tunnel in 1956, Mersey Kingsway tunnel in 1966, Blackwall southbound tunnel in 1967, second Dartford tunnel in 1972, and the Hatfield, Bell Common, Holmesdale and Penmaenbach tunnels in the 1980s. In all, MHA were involved in the construction of all but five of the UK's longest road tunnels (the exceptions being the Heathrow Cargo Tunnel, Heathrow Main Tunnel, Clyde Tunnel, Limehouse Link tunnel and Rotherhithe Tunnel). In the same period, MHA worked with
Freeman Fox & Partners Hyder Consulting was a multi-national advisory and design consultancy with particular specialisation in the transport, property, utilities and environmental sectors. The firm employed approximately 4,200 people across the UK, Europe, Germany, Midd ...
to design the
Forth Road Bridge The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in Central Belt, east central Scotland. The bridge opened in 1964 and at the time was the List of longest suspension bridge spans, longest suspension bridge in the world outside the United States. ...
and the
Severn Bridge The Severn Bridge () is a Controlled-access highway, motorway suspension bridge that spans the River Severn between South Gloucestershire in England and Monmouthshire in South East Wales. It is the original Severn crossing, Severn road crossi ...
. Other bridge commissions in this period include the Tamar Bridge located next to Brunel's 1859 Royal Albert Bridge, the Kuala Lepar bridge across the Pahang River in Malaysia and the new
London Bridge The name "London Bridge" refers to several historic crossings that have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark in central London since Roman Britain, Roman times. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 197 ...
(including the removal of Rennie's 1831 bridge and its reconstruction in
Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
). When work began on
London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...
's
Victoria line The Victoria line is a London Underground line that runs between in South London, and in the east, via the West End of London, West End. It is printed in light blue on the Tube map and is one of the only two lines on the network to run comp ...
in the early 1960s, responsibility for the tunnelling works was split between Mott, Hay and Anderson and Sir William Halcrow and Partners, each acting as Engineer for approximately half the length of the line. MHA partner John Bartlett patented the bentonite-slurry shield
tunnel boring machine A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole" or a "worm", is a machine used to excavate tunnels. TBMs are an alternative to drilling and blasting methods and "hand mining", allowing more rapid excavation through hard rock, wet or dry so ...
(UK patent 1083322) and a trial length of tunnel was drilled successfully through poor ground conditions at
New Cross New Cross is an area in south-east London, England, south-east of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Lewisham and the London_postal_district#List_of_London_postal_districts, SE14 postcode district. New Cross is near St Johns, London, St Jo ...
in London. The slurry shield design paved the way for the earth pressure balance TBM commonly used today.


Modern times

In the early 1970s, an alliance was formed with Australian consultants John Connell Group for the design and construction of the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop, opened in 1981. The alliance continued with bridge and tunnel works across Australia and Southeast Asia, culminating in the formation of a joint venture company (Mott Connell) in Hong Kong for the design of infrastructure in and around Chek Lap Kok airport, including the Lantau Link. As time went on, many of the assets built by the founders of the company began to show their age. The increase in traffic flow through the Queensway Tunnel meant that the ventilation system could no longer cope and additional ventilation tunnels were built under MHA's supervision in the early 1960s. In the 1980s the Blackwall northbound tunnel, which David Hay had worked on 90 years before, was refurbished by Murphy construction under the supervision of MHA. In 1979 they began economical and technical research on possibilities for the
Medellín Metro The Medellín Metro (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Metro de Medellín'') is a rapid transit system that crosses the Metropolitan Area of Medellín from North to South and from Centre to West. It first opened for service on 30 November 1995. As one ...
. The firm stopped trading as Mott, Hay and Anderson in 1989 when it merged with Sir M MacDonald & Partners to form Mott MacDonald. The firm of Mott MacDonald has since expanded its field of operations far beyond traditional consulting engineering (for example, it currently runs the education department of the
London Borough of Islington The London Borough of Islington ( ) is a London borough, borough in North London, England. Forming part of Inner London, Islington has an estimated population of 215,667. It was formed in 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, by the amalg ...
).


Channel Tunnel

Mott, Hay and Anderson were heavily involved in the design and construction of the
Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (), sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau, portmanteau Chunnel, is a undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at ...
between France and Great Britain. The firm were first involved in a proposal to build a tunnel between Britain and France in 1930, but this was unsuccessful. The design proposed in this feasibility study – twin running tunnels with a central service tunnel – was similar to the design eventually built. In 1957, the firm acted as adviser to the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas for another unsuccessful scheme. In the early 1970s, the firm capitalised on work funded by
British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...
to develop means of calculating the
aerodynamic Aerodynamics () is the study of the motion of atmosphere of Earth, air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dynamics and its subfield of gas dynamics, and is an ...
behaviour of high-speed trains in long, complex tunnel systems (the resulting methods are still used today to design tunnels for rail traffic). MHA and French firm SETEC were appointed as joint advisers to the British and French Channel Tunnel Companies, who proposed a workable scheme. Exploratory construction contracts were let, but the British Government abandoned the scheme in 1975, with the first
tunnel boring machine A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole" or a "worm", is a machine used to excavate tunnels. TBMs are an alternative to drilling and blasting methods and "hand mining", allowing more rapid excavation through hard rock, wet or dry so ...
(built to dig the service tunnel) literally sitting on its launch frame. Despite the lack of funding, a short section of service tunnel was dug beneath the English coast through ground that had been filled with instruments to assess the performance of the TBM. This section of service tunnel was incorporated into the successful scheme a decade later. In the late 1970s,
British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...
and
SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (, , SNCF ) is France's national State-owned enterprise, state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the Rail transport in France, country's national rail traffic along with th ...
appointed MHA and Setec as advisors to a smaller-scale project which also came to nothing. In the early 1980s, Mott, Hay and Anderson provided design services to two of the consortia bidding for the Channel Tunnel (Euroroute, who proposed a road tunnel, and the Channel Tunnel Group). The bid by the Channel Tunnel Group and France Manche was successful: the two bidders joined forces and reformed as an operating company Eurotunnel and construction contractor TransManche Link. MHA were appointed as the contractor's designer for the works on the British site (designing temporary works, bored tunnel linings, cut-and-cover tunnels, earthworks, trackwork, terminals & sea defences) and as designer for the ventilation, aerodynamics, smoke control and refrigeration systems in the entire tunnel. Between 1986 and 1994, the company expended approximately 650-man-years of work on the design of the Channel Tunnel.


Sources

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External links


Mott MacDonald websiteMott MacDonald website page on Channel Tunnel
{{Authority control Construction and civil engineering companies of the United Kingdom Consulting firms established in 1902 Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1902 1902 establishments in England British companies disestablished in 1989 British companies established in 1902 Construction and civil engineering companies disestablished in the 20th century