TOWN PLANNING AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT,
1945-74
The town-planning proposals made by Chester immediately after the Second World War extended beyond
the county borough's boundaries, but in 1947 legislation made the county council the planning authority
for the rural areas and outer suburbs, confining the
city's responsibilities within its own boundaries. After
that the city could prepare a development plan only
for the central clearance area, approved by the
government in 1952. (fn. 4) In 1957, with government
approval, the county drew up plans for a green belt,
roughly following the line of the projected outer ringroad. The intention was to restrict further building in
rural areas and to prevent urban sprawl from spreading all the way to Ellesmere Port, but in Chester it
was seen as designed to prevent a successful submission for a borough extension. (fn. 5) Despite protests
that the green belt had been drawn too tightly, (fn. 6)
together with the shortage of building land and the
continuing difficulty of balancing economic growth
with environmental considerations, the planning
restrictions in fact proved to be the key to prosperity.
City centre shops clearly attracted visitors in part
because of their historic environment, and conservation was vital to their success. The main developments in planning, rebuilding, and conservation did
not really begin until after 1960, but by 1974 the
appearance of much of the city centre within and just
beyond the walls had changed radically, while new
suburbs had spread far to the west and north of the
older built-up area.
Traffic and Road Planning. A major element in the
council's plans was the completion of inner and outer
ring-roads, since it was acknowledged that the solution
of the traffic problem would determine whether Chester remained a regional centre. (fn. 7) The outer ring-road
remained incomplete, notably south of the city, where
a new bridge across the Dee was urgently needed. The
inner ring-road had its origins in the widening of Little
St. John Street in 1938. In 1962, after abandoning a
proposal to widen Northgate Street, (fn. 8) the council
adopted a scheme which connected Little St. John
Street, Pepper Street, and Grosvenor Street to a new
roundabout north of the castle and then ran north
along a widened Nicholas Street and Linenhall Street,
to swing eastwards outside the walls on an elevated
viaduct and then descend southwards across the site of
the cattle market at the Gorse Stacks to join Foregate
Street at the junction with City Road. Although the
planned route connected with Grosvenor Bridge,
which already took far too much traffic, the government endorsed the scheme and paid three quarters of
its construction costs of £1.2 million. (fn. 9) The northwestern section was opened in 1966, (fn. 10) and the entire
road had been completed by 1972. Although it
improved traffic flow, its impact on the environment
caused concern. The northern city wall was breached
to make the austere St. Martin's Gate, designed by the
city engineer and surveyor, A. H. F. Jiggens, in
consultation with G. Grenfell Baines and with approval
from the Royal Fine Arts Commission. (fn. 11) St. Martin's
church was sacrificed, along with Georgian houses on
the east side of Nicholas Street, and Egerton House on
Upper Northgate Street, regarded by one observer as
among the city's best Georgian buildings. (fn. 1) In addition
the viaduct was thought obtrusive, (fn. 2) the way in which
the new road separated the city centre from the Dee
was widely condemned, and there were doubts about
the impact of the concrete multi-storey car parks built
as part of the scheme. (fn. 3) The removal of the cattle
market from the Gorse Stacks to a new site at Sealand
Road in 1970, however, was a distinct environmental
improvement, as the movement of cattle between
it and the railway station had previously held up
traffic, inconvenienced pedestrians, and discouraged
tourists. (fn. 4)
An extensive one-way system within the city had
been planned in 1950 but was opposed by traders who
feared that it would affect sales. A very limited scheme,
in Foregate Street alone, was begun in 1966. (fn. 5) With the
inner ring-road and car parks in place, further one-way
routes were introduced in 1971, (fn. 6) and vehicular access
to the central streets around the Cross was restricted
from 1972-3. (fn. 7)
City Centre Redevelopment. Immediately west of the
town hall was a large tract of derelict land from which
substandard housing had been cleared in the 1930s. In
1945 the city engineer and surveyor, Charles Greenwood, presented a redevelopment plan which
attempted to reconcile economic and cultural considerations. As well as council offices and a replacement
for the Victorian public market, which no longer
complied with hygiene regulations, the plan included
a civic centre with a new central library, a museum and
art gallery, and a concert hall. A scheme based on
Greenwood's plan was approved by the government in
1952 but not put into effect. (fn. 8) In 1958 the council
added a bus exchange to its requirements, (fn. 9) and in 1960
invited private developers to submit schemes. The brief
was for an extension to the town hall, a general market
with associated car parks, and sites for private development. The council appointed G. Grenfell Baines as
its planning consultant, and in 1961, on his recommendation that it was 'sound and imaginative town
planning expressed in good modern architecture',
accepted a scheme, the Forum, by Michael Lyell &
Associates. (fn. 10) Although the city, which owned the land,
was freed from the costs of development, it ceded the
bulk of the profits to private enterprise. (fn. 11) The Forum
was closely associated with the inner ring-road, which
was planned to run along the western edge of the site
and from which car parking under the market hall, and
the new bus station, were reached.
Grenfell Baines produced planning guidelines for the
whole city centre in 1964, (fn. 12) but the first phase of Lyell's
scheme, the market hall, was delayed until 1967
because of archaeological work. (fn. 13) Only the market
hall retained the boxy design of Lyell's original
scheme; the final phase, which included council offices
and a shopping mall and was delayed by excavation
until 1969-72, was characterized by the Brutalist brickclad forms made fashionable in the early 1960s by the
architect James Stirling. It had council offices boldly
cantilevered over the Northgate Street entrance to the
shopping mall, and was widely hated from the start. (fn. 14)
Office blocks were built speculatively near by, north of
Hunter Street, but no attempt was made to integrate
them with the Forum.
Multi-level planning similar to the Forum's was used
by the Grosvenor-Laing property company for the
Grosvenor Centre on 3½ acres owned by the Grosvenor estate between Bridge Street, Eastgate Street,
Pepper Street, and Newgate Street. The last was
blocked by the multi-storey car park and department
store at the centre of the scheme. The design of 1963,
by Sir Percy Thomas and Son, was an early example of
the tendency in historic towns to hide bulky new
shopping centres behind existing buildings. It left the
Rows almost intact, including a new block along Eastgate Street, separately designed Row-fashion by
Gordon Jeeves in 1962 for Central & District Properties. (fn. 15) The new buildings were exposed only to the rear,
where a multi-storey car park faced the Newgate and
Newgate Street, and on Pepper Street, which received a
long concrete-clad façade. The scheme incorporated
the early 20th-century St. Michael's Row and the
Grosvenor Hotel, which was lavishly refurbished and
extended, while providing 60 new shops, as well as
office and conference facilities. It took only two years
to complete, compared with the 12-year gestation of
the Forum, and when opened in 1964, it was estimated
that it would contribute £100,000 to the rates. (fn. 16) On a
smaller scale but similar in planning approach was
Mercia Square (1970) in Frodsham Street.
A handful of relatively small, cautiously modern
commercial buildings invaded sensitive sites, for example that built in 1963 in Northgate Street, (fn. 1) and
another of higher quality in Watergate Street. The most
prominently sited and uncompromisingly modern new
building was the eight-storeyed county police headquarters, designed in 1964 by the county architect,
Edgar Taberner, for a site dominating the entrance to
the city from the Grosvenor Bridge, formerly occupied
by the militia barracks. (fn. 2)
By the mid 1960s the area within the walls was
virtually devoid of residents and consequently free of
serious smoke pollution. To enliven the centre, which
at night was virtually empty and prey to vandals, (fn. 3)
planners began to advocate the provision of new
residential accommodation. (fn. 4) Depopulation entailed a
reorganization of the city's Anglican parishes and the
redundancy of several city churches in 1972. (fn. 5) The
Methodists rationalized their circuits in 1963 and
closed city-centre chapels in Hunter Street and
George Street in 1967 and 1970. Among the other
main denominations, the Congregationalists did not
rebuild their chapel in Queen Street after it was
destroyed by fire in 1963, and left the Upper Northgate
Street chapel in 1967, while the Baptists abandoned
Grosvenor Park Road in 1974. The Unitarians replaced
the Matthew Henry chapel, a victim of the inner-city
redevelopment scheme in 1962, with a chapel in
Blacon. All the main denominations and many of the
smaller groups, however, retained a presence in the city
centre in 1974. (fn. 6)
In 1962 the Civic Trust, founded in 1959 to heighten
public awareness of Chester's character, history, and
civic design, initiated a plan to improve the appearance
of the main streets. Owners and traders were persuaded
to finance the refurbishment of their properties to an
overall design, and to remove or replace unsightly
signs. The council paid the fees of an architect to
prepare the design and oversee its execution. In 1966
the first scheme, for Bridge Street, was judged a success,
and Eastgate Street then received similar treatment. (fn. 7)
The radical transformation of the city centre during the
1960s, however, exposed the conflict between growth
and environmental quality, and heightened tensions
between those who opposed change and those who
sought it. (fn. 8)
Conservation. Many Cestrians considered the historic
city to be essentially medieval, which is perhaps why
they had countenanced the loss of Georgian and
Victorian buildings and continued to prefer a fake
half-timbered version of the Domestic Revival style.
The council did little to preserve Chester's genuine
historic buildings, and by the 1940s much of the Rows
was in very poor repair, and Lower Bridge Street could
be described as 'verging on a slum'. (fn. 9) In 1955 property
in Watergate Street, bought by the council to protect it,
was destroyed on the grounds that it had deteriorated
beyond repair. (fn. 10) The Gap, as it became known, was a
constant embarrassment to the council, which organized a competition for an infill design in 1963, won by
Herbert J. Rowse & Harker; (fn. 11) their block of shops and
offices, designed as a Row in a contemporary idiom
with flat-roofed cantilevered bays and exposed concrete, remained unfinished until the late 1960s. (fn. 12)
Successive councils had proved unwilling to spend
money on conservation. (fn. 13) In 1959, for example, the
corporation announced that the Blue Bell Inn in
Northgate Street was too expensive to repair and
would be pulled down. The ensuing campaign ended
when the government refused to permit demolition,
and the corporation had to spend £2,500 on preserving
the building. (fn. 14)
By 1966 opinion was changing; the council was
persuaded to abandon plans to destroy Georgian
houses in Queen Street, (fn. 15) and agreed to renovate the
Nine Houses in Park Street rather than demolish
them. (fn. 16) Even so, it is doubtful whether conservation
on a serious scale could have begun without extensive
help from national funds. (fn. 17) In 1966 Richard Crossman,
minister of housing and local government, commissioned a pilot study of four towns of special historic
importance, including Chester, to elicit what special
problems such places faced in relation to their modern
development. The study led to the formulation of a
national policy on conservation which had extremely
important consequences for many historic towns and
cities. (fn. 18) The report of Chester's consultant, Donald
Insall, was a watershed in the history of conservation
in the city. The content and status of his report, with
the weight of central government behind it, changed
the council's attitude. The crucial factor was the
availability of central government funds for conservation. The Insall Report dealt with all aspects of town
planning, from traffic management to tree-planting, in
relation to the city's historic fabric. It asserted that the
restoration of old buildings could enhance both their
own value and that of the whole city centre, and
provided a realistically costed 15-year programme
which identified the buildings most in need of
saving. (fn. 1) The council's director of technical services,
Cyril Morris, put many of Insall's recommendations
into effect immediately. In 1969 a conservation area of
200 acres was declared, covering the city within the
walls, the Roodee, and a section of the river frontage.
The council began an exemplary policy of acquiring,
restoring, and selling buildings, and encouraged private
owners, developers, and architects to undertake similar
renovation work, backed by council and government
grants. A conservation officer was employed to liaise
with local residents, for instance in King Street, where
individual owners rehabilitated their houses. A new
conservation rate of 1d. in the pound, at the time
unique in English cities, was expected to raise £30,000
a year for a conservation fund. (fn. 2) In 1970 the council
appointed Insall and Associates as its conservation
consultants, in which role they continued until 1987;
they instituted a phased programme and reported on
progress in 1976 and 1986. (fn. 3)
Three of the thirteen separate areas of individual
character mapped by Insall and Associates were identified as action areas. The first to be the subject of
detailed plans by the consultants was the Bridgegate
area in 1970, followed by Watergate Street in 1973. The
Bridgegate plan was approved in 1973, (fn. 4) and work
financed equally by local and central government was
completed in 1980. It began with the renovation of
older buildings on the west side of Lower Bridge Street
such as Shipgate House and Gamul House, and of
terraces in the adjoining Gamul Place, which had been
neglected by their owner, the county council. Sympathetically designed residential units were built to
replace low-grade property and to fill empty sites.
After 1974 the Falcon Inn at the top end of Lower
Bridge Street was saved as a public house by a small
charitable trust set up for the purpose, and new uses
were found for three redundant churches in the area,
St. Michael, St. Olave, and St. Mary. An empty building
in Duke Street became the county record office. (fn. 5)
Archaeology. Before the late 1960s Chester also
neglected the archaeological record. The work of
Professor Robert Newstead (d. 1947) was largely
unrecognized. (fn. 6) Such indifference ignored the potential
contribution of the excavated archaeology to the
tourist trade. Excavation by Ian Richmond in the
1940s in the central clearance area revealed the
Roman army's headquarters building in Goss Street
and the ditch fronting the Roman west wall in Princess
Street. (fn. 7) In the 1960s redevelopment of the city centre
provided a unique opportunity to discover more of the
Roman fortress. The excavations, which were funded
by the government and the corporation, revealed the
plan of a unique elliptical building and Roman floors
on the Forum site, and the full extent of the bathhouse, together with part of a barrack block, under the
Grosvenor Centre. The destruction of the remains of
the baths, still of great size and a high degree of
preservation, provoked much controversy. (fn. 8)
The walls were the city's most potent tourist attraction. (fn. 9) Despite proposals by Greenwood in 1945 and
Grenfell Baines in 1964, the council failed to ensure
that their surroundings were cleared and landscaped.
Their very survival was always precarious, for the
friable stone of which they were built made them
expensive to conserve and repair. Only after the Insall
Report of 1968 were the walkways even cleaned efficiently. (fn. 10)
The greatest test of the council's commitment to
uncovering Chester's ancient history was its attitude to
the Roman amphitheatre. In 1949 the Ministry of
Works offered to excavate it if given guardianship. (fn. 11)
The council agreed, and work began in 1960. Since Dee
House remained in private hands, only the section
already owned by the city and the Archaeological
Society could be excavated. The work proceeded
slowly throughout the 1960s, partly because of difficulty in shoring up the adjoining higher ground. When
it was completed in 1971, there was much disappointment among the general public that there was little to
see. By 1974, the improvement committee, however,
was prepared to state publicly that the amphitheatre
was 'one of the greatest unrealized assets in the city', (fn. 12)
but its future remained a matter of debate in 2000.
Little interest was taken in any aspects of Chester's
archaeology other than the Roman period. (fn. 13)