Worcester city: The redevelopment plans of 1946

Artist's impression of how Worcester would have looked

The city of Worcester could have looked very different if a radical plan published in 1946 had been acted on.

Two new roads would have kept the city centre traffic free, there would have been new parks and open spaces to give it the feel of a "garden city".

There would have been many new public buildings, including a theatre, a concert hall, a football and athletic stadium, a hospital and a civic centre.

A big new retail complex and bus station was proposed - on the site where the Crowngate shopping centre was built 60 years later.

Brave new world

As World War 2 drew to a close, the City Council in Worcester decided to commission a radical examination of how the city should be redeveloped in the latter half of the 20th century.

The work was carried out by two architects, Anthony Minoprio and Hugh Spencely, and their recommendations were published in 1946 as a hardback book, complete with glossy artist's impressions, and maps showing how the new city would look.

The new square planned for opposite the Guildhall

In their preface they highlighted the dangers of allowing the city to develop piecemeal, predicting: "Without a set policy and a plan, Worcester might so easily drift into a smaller, sleepy place, inhabited largely by elderly people, or into a bustling manufacturing town without dignity or charm."

They could not have foreseen what happened to the city centre in the redevelopments of the 1960s, which were condemned by Mr Matley Moore, at a meeting of the Worcestershire Archaeology Society in December 1964 as "a brutal destruction of the whole city, masquerading under the title of progress."

So controversial were these later redevelopments that they became national news, and even featured in David Frost's satirical programme That Was The Week That Was.

Cathedral close

The 1946 report came up with three key recommendations allowing the city of Worcester to grow without losing its character:

• The preservation of the riverside as an open space.
• The elimination of through traffic from the housing and shopping areas.
• the creation of a close around Worcester Cathedral.

They were particularly keen to see traffic kept away from the cathedral, so that it could be set in its own green precinct, allowing the building to be better seen from the High Street.

The cathedral was not the only building to showcased; the plans proposed the building of a new square opposite the Guildhall in High Street, where the Golden Lion arcade now stands.

The new civic centre and public hall around the 'Glovers Needle'

They also had very different plans for the land next to the cathedral and Bishop's Palace, where the Worcester Technical College now stands:

"The plateau itself would be laid out with paths and seats, grass and flowers, japonica, hibiscus and other decorative trees, and should form a pleasant oasis in the heart of the city."

New buildings in this area would have included an Elgar memorial concert hall and a public hall built of "brick and stone, as used for the Police and Fire Stations."

By 1955 the Worcester Evening News was reporting that the new Technical College was to built on this site, but some remnants of the 1946 plan remained in that "the committee were most insistent that the elevation of the college should conform in design and general appearance... with the new Police and Fire Stations."

By 1964, when the Technical College was actually built, everything had changed, with the Shell Guide To Worcestershire damning the building with faint praise, calling it: "long, concrete and horizontal. From its site on the banks of the river, looking across the world famous view of the west front of the cathedral it shouts 'This is the Brave New Word'. But the shout somehow seems to lack conviction."

The decision to build the Technical College in that style and on that site remains controversial to this day.

Traffic free

Key to the plan was to make the city centre virtually traffic free, by building a ring road around the city.

This would have meant building two new roads:

• One would follow the line of the Worcester to Birmingham canal.
• One would run from the A449 Kidderminster road north of Worcester, following the line of the River Severn, skirting the Pitchcroft racecourse, crossing the canal on a new bridge north of the Commandery, and joining the London road via a cutting through Fort Royal hill.

The planners believed that "a ring road around the built up area lying between Pitchcroft and the canal would enable traffic to get quickly north and south, without using the Tything."

Drivers crawling along the Tything in rush hour might wonder if these new roads could have solved Worcester's traffic problems.

Civic Amenities

The proposed new swimming baths near Cripplegate Park

The 1946 plan suggested the building of a number of civic amenities in the redesigned Worcester, some of which have still not seen the light of day:

• Stadium: The plan suggested building a new stadium, which could be used for football and athletics, on the site of an old brickworks next to the canal, in the north of the city. 70 years on Worcester City are still playing at St George's Lane, and the site for a new stadium for them to use remains a contentious issue.
• Swimming baths: In 1940s Worcester has a tiny outdoor pool in Sansome Walk, plus some 'swimming barges' moored off Pitchcroft, for the hardier river swimmers. The 1946 plan proposed an indoor swimming pool near Cripplegate Park, heated by waste heat from the nearby electricity works (which was demolished in the 1970s). Worcester didn't get an indoor heated swimming pool until 1972. Interestingly the city's other pool, at Lower Wick, is heated by waste energy, this time from the nearby sewage works.
• Theatre: At the time of the 1946 report Worcester's Angel Theatre, which had stood in Angel Street since 1780, was well past its sell-by-date. The development plan proposed building a brand new theatre in The Butts.
  In reality, the Angel Theatre closed in 1955 and was demolished in 1960. Worcester didn't get a new theatre until the Swan Theatre opened later in the 1960s.
• New hospital: in 1946 Worcester's hospitals were split onto two sites - the 18th century Worcester Royal Infirmary, and Ronkswood Hospital, on the other side of the city, mainly built in WW2. The proposal was to build a new hospital on a site in Henwick Road, described as "a site as high, and surroundings as pleasant, as any in the city." It was never built, and the new Worcestershire Royal Infirmary didn't open for another 60 years.
• Shopping centre: The report proposed building a continental-style shopping centre with wide covered pavements, a central square and an integrated bus station, all centred around Angel Place. In the 1960s the concrete Blackfriars shopping centre was built on the same site. This was later demolished to make way for the Crowngate shopping centre, which in some ways mirrors the 1946 plan.
• Public Hall: In 1946 Worcester had a Public Hall, in the Cornmarket, where the likes of Charles Dickens, Dvorak and Edward Elgar had performed. The proposal to build a new hall near the Glover's Needle was never taken up.
  The old public Hall was demolished in the 1960's, and, despite assurances by a councillor at the time that they did not want "to see it as a vacant site", it is now a car park.

A copy of Worcester Plan - An outline development plan for Worcester bu Anthony Minoprio and Hugh Spencely FF RIPA can be seen at the Worcestershire Records Office.