Nottingham Civic Society - Town planning 1927

On 5 January 1925 the Nottingham City Council, through their Estates
Committee, after a second reading belatedly decided to replace its old shabby
Exchange building with a new civic hall designed by its Housing Architect,
T. Cecil Howitt. Howitt’s original design was for a rather splendid shopping
arcade; fully open east west as well as the familiar north south. Subsequently,
after some severe reservations, his proposal was altered to include extensive
council accommodation at the western end facing onto the Market Place, thus
closing that opening. The plan of the shopping arcade changed from a cross
to a T shape. In due course, after the demolition of the old Exchange, which
mainly dated from 1724, the foundation stone of the new building was laid on
17 March 1927.

It was soon obvious that the existing Market Place with its ‘conglomeration
of unsightly’ heavy wooden canvas covered stalls and attendant litter would
not provide a suitable approach to the new building. On the 4 July 1927, the
Council adopted a recommendation from the General Purposes Committee to
move the Market to a site, owned by the Council, on King Edward Street.
Various proposals were suggested for the use of the Market Place. There
was some vague consultation with local interest groups and societies. From
stallholders and market traders there was considerable hostility at the loss of
a Nottingham institution stretching back over 800 years. In the end, perhaps
inevitably and without competition, the task of redesigning the Market Place
was given to Howitt who duly produced his Market Square - before long
it became the people’s popular ‘Slab Square’ and offi cially ‘Old Market
Square’.

Before the fate of the Market Place was fi nally entrusted to Howitt, the changes in the centre of Nottingham began to attract the nation’s architectural press. Their feature writers started to evaluate these changes. One commentator was Charles Thornton.

Thornton writing for Garden Cities and Town Planning the journal of the
Association of the same name produced an article ‘Nottingham and its Market
Place. A Plea for Town Planning Powers for Built-up Areas.’ This appeared
in the issue for October 1927. Correctly anticipating that the Council’s future
plans for the Market Place would largely ignore traffic flow he put forward the rather bold proposal to create a triangle of main roads close to the centre of the city, at the heart of which would be the new Market Place.

In order to achieve this Thornton wanted primarily a wide slightly curving
road from the junction of Chapel Bar and Park Row down to the area where
Carrington Street met Greyfriar Gate. One might observe he was anticipating
Maid Marian Way by some 25 years! His second move was from the end of a
widened Clumber Street and High Street take a new road in a curve across St
Peter’s Gate, behind St. Peter’s Church to the bottom end of Low Pavement
and so into Lister Gate. The third side of the triangle was Upper Parliament
Street, which of course extended from Chapel bar to Clumber Street. The most
controversial section of this network was widening High Street to the west,
taking off part of the Exchange site! This had already been widened through
the 1923 Nottingham Corporation Act.

Thornton did not even consider that his new main road would cut off the
Castle from the centre of the city. Whilst enormous changes have taken place
in the city and even more are promised in the wake of the arrival of the NET
and the Big Wheel initiative, some of his passages are worth another airing. He
started by describing the physical setting.

‘The City of Nottingham claims to be “The Queen of the Midlands” and
many facts can be put forward in justifi cation of that claim. One of them is
the possession, at its very centre and pivot, of the Great Market Place, reputed to be the largest open one in England comprising a space which, with the surround ing roadways, covers an area of upwards of fi ve acres.

Nottingham is a town of awkward contours; it is built mainly on a range of
low but fairly steep hills and is crossed on its southern side by a cliff which
extends with breaks from Colwick Woods on the east by High Pave ment to
the Castle Rock and from there by Newcastle Terrace and ends by joining up
with high ground near the top of Derby Road towards the west. Between High
Pavement and the Castle Rock there is a wide break in the cliff through which
the main thoroughfare from Trent Bridge and the South passes to the Market
Place. The other chief roads out from the Market are probably near the line of
old tracks, the direction of which would be partly determined by the suitability
of the contours.

Nottingham is, thus, a spider web town with the Market as the central parlour,
and the tendency is for traffi c crossing the city to pass through it.’
Thornton continues by assessing the failings of the movement of traffi c across the city centre at the time.

‘The Market Place is somewhat irregu1ar in shape, roughly, an oblong; its
greater length east and west with an angular west end where it narrows down
into Chapel Bar leading to Derby Road the main western thread of the web. The
general result is a roughly triangular central traffic system. Traffic down Derby Road strikes the apex and passes by Chapel Bar into the Market Place and out by Wheeler Gate to Trent Bridge and the south; it can avoid the Market only by tortuous routes with awkward gradients or by giving the centre a very wide berth. It can pass to Sherwood, Mansfi eld and the North by Parliament Street without entering the Market and the width of Parliament Street is adequate. Traffic from North to South must, however pass through the Market and leave it by Wheeler Gate. There is the possibility of collateral communication by Clumber Street, but this is so narrow that it is dedicated to one-way traffic. A new way is to be opened up from the North to Trent Bridge but it is somewhat roundabout and will not, for many years, attract light traffi c. It would be more satisfactory if it led to a new bridge over the river to relieve Trent Bridge of traffi c to the East but the cost of a bridge would be very considerable. The North East is fed from the North-Eastern corner of the triangle but to pass due east, the traffi c must, perforce, make for the river crossing, The traffic system described fi ts the contours fairly well.’
He then puts forward his solution for easing the current and future traffic chaos.

‘Though it is desirable for heavy traffic to skirt the City by ring roads, it would be a doubtful ad vantage to the City for traffi c to do so generally and what is needed is a triangular system of roads that would permit trams and the main currents of traffi c from all directions, to pass suffi ciently near to the Market Place and to feed it without passing through it; and this could be achieved by widening Clumber Street which is a continuation of Mansfi eld Road, constructing a short new stretch to join with the Trent Bridge route (Carrington Street) and by con structing eventually a new road from the point where the Derby Road becomes Chapel Bar; also to join the Trent Bridge route. This would be a fairly large undertaking but it could be so directed that it would pass chiefl y through back property, which would be improved. It could also be planned to take the gradient at a convenient angle.

‘This road system would enclose a central triangular district at the heart of
the City freed from main current traffi c. This district could then evolve into
a dignifi ed and com paratively peaceful centre for shops. Public institutions
should also be placed within or on the immediate outward verge of the
charmed triangle.’ So a peaceful centre could be achieved without a mention of
pedestrianisation!

‘The carrying out of such a traffi c system would raise the inevitable bogey
of cost, but cost would also be saved as it would not then be necessary to
widen any of the thorough fares heading into the Market Place and the sense
of enclosure of the Market would not be interfered with. It would be diffi cult
to destroy this sense of enclosure in a space of such dimensions. At the same
time, the widening of thoroughfares will tend to reduce that sense. At present,
the vistas of roads leading up to it are suitably closed, the Northern and
Western exits are uphill, and Wheeler Gate which goes slightly downhill to
the South, is crescent-shaped. Friar Lane, which leads to the Castle entrance,
has recently been widened and this has lessened the sense of enclosure just a
little. Had it been straightened out on its left-hand side, this would not have
occurred to the same extent. Moreover, the improvement would have been
greater as the Castle Gateway would probably have formed a clear vista; from
the Market Place.’

Eight years later the Council, through the Nottingham Corporation Act 1935,
started to think in terms of street works which would allow traffi c to by-pass the Old Market Square, as the new Market Place was now named. Among
street improvements included in the Act and adopted by the Council in January
1936 was the widening of the narrow Granby Street, which went from Friar
Lane to St. James’ Street and the extension of Granby Street to Park Row.
Any further ideas on an inner ring road had to wait until after World War II to get near implementation. In October 1945 the Council resolved to promote a
Bill, which would include powers to set out a new road from Castle Boulevard
to the junction of Park Row, Upper Parliament Street and Chapel Bar -
virtually Thornton’s starting point of 1927. In November the newly elected
Council confi rmed the decision. However the Bill met with considerable
hostility through the expected expense and unnecessary demolition involved.
Although at the requisite public meeting to approve the promotion of the Bill
the Lord Mayor declared a show of hands was in favour of it proceeding, the
opposition disputed this. The Council accepted a petition for a referendum
on the matter and in the resulting poll of ratepayers the Bill was rejected by
10,706 votes to 4,029.

The various surreptitious moves of the Council to acquire land for the eventual
contentious setting out of the new road must wait to be recounted on another
day. Could the loss of the Collin’s Almshouses of 1709; the best almshouses
of the period in England, and Fothergill Watson’s St. Peter’s rectory have been
avoided if more consideration been given at the planning stage? Suffi cient to
record here that the fi rst stage of a narrower new road, named Maid Marian
Way opened for traffic in 1958.

Proposed new street, Town Planning 1927

Ken Brand
April 2004

Thirty-nine years ago, on the 26 February 1965, Professor Arthur Ling, then
head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Nottingham, came out with his well-worn verdict on Maid Marian Way.

‘Maid Marian Way is an insult to Maid Marian and one of the ugliest modern
streets in Europe. In one section of the street where building is not yet
completed, 38 different materials have so far been used.’

Towards the end of last year a planning brief was issued for the demolition
of People’s College, not exactly the prettiest building even on Maid Marian
Way. The subsequent redevelopment of the site would be for mixed uses that
included a smaller education presence for People’s College.

TOWN PLANNING 1927