Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area March 2009
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Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area March 2009 Appraisal and Management Proposals Draft for Public Consultation PART ONE : THE APPRAISAL 1.0 INTRODUCTION 2.0 SUMMARY OF SPECIAL INTEREST 2.1 Principal features 2.2 Narrative Summary 3.0 ASSESSING SPECIAL INTEREST 3.1 Location and Setting 3.2 Origins and Historic Development 3.3 Introduction to Character Areas 3.4 Character Area 1 : Commercial Centre Principal features Location and Topography Uses Historic Development The Market Place Queens Road Abbey Street Bridge Street Newdegate Street Stafford Street Coventry Street Townscape and Architectural Character The Market Place & Bridge Street Queens Road Abbey Street Newdegate Street Coventry Street Negative Features 3.5 Character Area 2: Civic and Administrative Centre 3.6 Character Area 3 : Riversley Park, and Coton Road 3.7 Character Area 4 : Park Fringe 3.8 Character Area 5 : The Church, Vicarage & Schools PART TWO : FUTURE CARE 4.0 MANAGEMENT PROPOSALS 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Suggested Conservation Area Boundary Changes 4.3 Management Proposals 2 PART 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION 2.0 SUMMARY OF SPECIAL INTEREST Conservation areas are designated under the 2.1 Principal Features of Special provisions of Section 69 of the Planning (Listed Architectural and Historic Interest2 Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 where they are defined as ‘[areas] of special • Street pattern of the medieval town, part of architectural and historic interest the character which has its origins in the Anglo- Saxon pre- and appearance of which it is desirable to urban village settlement of Eaton. preserve or enhance” • Large, later infilled market place attesting the commercial importance of the medieval town to This document is an appraisal of the special its founders the Priory of St Mary and its parent architectural and historic interest of the abbey of Fontevrault in France. Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area • Medieval Grade 1 listed Church of St Nicholas (designated in 1979 and extended in 1987 (1)) standing somewhat isolated on the edge of the and immediately adjacent areas currently lying town. (2) outside the present conservation area boundary. It seeks to define and describe the area’s 2 special interest in order to assist in its future management and change. An understanding of what is special about the area should aid council members and officers in determining future planning applications that will affect it. The appraisal also provides an opportunity to review the boundaries of the area and to suggest possible future management proposals. The document is divided into two parts. The first part comprises the appraisal itself, and the second part contains management proposals1 resulting from the appraisal. Both parts will be subject to • Listed buildings associated with the church periodic future review to take account of any including the 17th century former vicarage and significant change in the area concerned. It is the earlier and later grammar school buildings. (3, anticipated that much of the appraisal in part one 4&5) will remain relevant over a longer period than • Variety of late-Victorian and Edwardian civic management proposals in part two. and commercial buildings in the town centre. No unified building type or style but the more The appraisal is not intended to be wholly important are generally built of red brick with comprehensive in its contents, and failure to terracotta or stone detailing. (6&7) mention any particular building, feature, or space should not be taken to imply that it is 3 of no interest. It is currently in draft form and comments on its contents are invited. 1 Currently draft proposals 2 The omission of any particular feature here or elsewhere in the document does not imply it is of no interest 3 Existing Nuneaton Conservation Area Boundary designated in 1979 and extended in 1987. 1 4 • Examples of successful late 19th /early 20th 4 century businesses developing into department stores but retaining individual component buildings. (8&9) • A small group of good quality late 19th / early 20th century bank buildings on prominent corner positions in and around the Market Place in various styles of the period. (10&11) • Good representation of interwar civic and commercial buildings in main streets including the Town Hall (now Council House) in Coventry Street and the Co-operative Society building in Queens Road (12&13) • Surviving lengths of traditional building frontages of Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war periods along commercial streets (14& 15) • Edwardian Riversley Park and post-war George Elliot Memorial Gardens lying close to the town centre (16&17) • Substantial 19th century buildings, mostly houses, flanking the west side of Coton Road opposite Riversley Park. (18) 5 2.2 Summary Nuneaton was one of the earliest market towns to be established in North Warwickshire in the mid-12th century. But it was slow to expand, and even by the 1880s it was of compact size and not much larger than it had been in the late Tudor period. 3 Through much of the19th century it had experienced mixed economic fortunes but then at the end of the century, as coalfield production burgeoned, it expanded 6 7 3 E. A. Veasey Nuneaton A History p97 5 rapidly accompanied by much rebuilding of its relatively run-down old centre. Expansion 8 and rebuilding continued through the 20th century, with a particularly intense campaign of redevelopment taking place in the 1960s. As a result Nuneaton today does not have the rich architectural legacy one would normally expect of such an ancient town. A significant part of its architectural character derives instead from late- Victorian, Edwardian and Inter-war commercial enterprise and civic endeavour, together with the heavy imprint of post-war town planning and mid-late 20th century shopping development. But this comparatively recent architectural heritage is set within a framework of streets and spaces 9 that had been established in the main by the mid 12th century albeit modified by various highway schemes of the 20th century. As is often found among industrial ‘boom’ towns associated with late 19th and early 20th century coal mining, it lacks any real sense of a civic centre or focus, though in Nuneaton’s case the major reasons for this go much further back than the late industrial era. One customary focus, the parish church, now lies beyond the ring road but it is likely that it was displaced to the edge of the town when the medieval ‘new town’ was 10 11 laid out in the 12th century4. The Market Place, once a massive rectangular open space at the heart of the early town (19), was subsequently infilled with a planned rectangular ‘island’ block of development at its centre, again during the medieval period. This, together with road widening schemes of the last century, makes its presence hard to distinguish from the network of streets that converge upon it. Civic buildings, another customary town centre focus, particularly in industrial towns, were only made necessary by 4 It is likely that there was a church on the site of the present the rapid expansion and population growth of building (which dates from the mid 14th century) before what had been essentially a small market town the medieval town was laid out but no evidence of an up until the late 19th century. As the town grew earlier building has been yet found. and made greater demands on public services 6 12 15 13 16 17 14 18 7 Extract fro 1902 OS Plan with the extent of the original medieval market place indicated in yellow 19 20 1884 OS Plan showing Abbey Street and the Market Place as the town plan’s main elements - note the long thin burgage plots lining them and Church Street. 20 8 and governance, public buildings were repeatedly 3.0 ASSESSING SPECIAL INTEREST replaced on different sites on an ad-hoc basis as and when new larger plots became available and 3.1 LOCATION AND SETTING resources permitted, so that today they appear scattered throughout the town. Nuneaton is located in northern Warwickshire one mile to the south of the A5 (Roman Watling Though partially obscured and fragmented by Street) that forms the County’s northern road schemes and commercial redevelopment boundary with Leicestershire. It lies eight miles to of the last century, the town centre retains most the north of Coventry being almost connected to of the major elements of its medieval plan. This that city by a string of former mining settlements comprises its street network converging on the including Bedworth and Keresley that stand on market place whose principle components are the East Warwickshire Coalfield (21). the market place itself and the main street, Abbey Street. One other major element of the medieval The town is also situated at a convergence of plan however has now mostly disappeared. This ancient road routes on the River Anker indicating was the pattern of long and narrow rectangular that it was historically an important river plots to properties lining the major streets and crossing point for the area. The river is however the market place. They created a varied fine very difficult to detect within the town centre ‘grain’ pattern of historic development that today though in the past it was responsible for was still evident in street plans of the town up extensive and repeated flooding of commercial to the mid 20th century (20). Most plots have streets. (25) been amalgamated and the historic boundaries between them removed as the scale of Nuneaton lies on flat land in a slight hollow at commercial development increased during the an elevation of 270 ft on the eastern edge of 20th century. Small groups survive on the south the East Warwickshire Plateau.