The Way Things are Going - Trust Annual Report 1973
The development of Winchester has taken place over many centuries. The road plan is based on the Saxon streets which in turn derived from a Roman plan. Even the drastic changes wrought by the recent traffic plan are not far from the line of the walled city. Chance has played a large part in this development, giving it an attraction which no planner could achieve. Large and expensive houses jostled others of a more modest character. The larger houses had gardens, and the smaller faced the streets. There were suitable dwellings for every pocket. The main shopping centre was always the High Street, with the shopkeepers living over the business. Thus shopping, housing and workshops combined easily into one harmonious totality. The early houses were timber framed, later giving way to brick, with many of the old walls incorporated in later styles. Great flexibility allowed houses to change gradually absorbing every kind of urban activity. The streets acquired an intimacy over the centuries, still existing today in the old parts of the city, but lacking in so many of the recent developments.
Lately the elements making for change have grown too big for the city structure. The first of the cuckoos was the County Council followed quickly by private enterprise with a sharp eye for the quick profit in property development. So replacing the small scale street architecture, having a front door every twenty feet or so, the trend is to confront us with large chunks of mass produced building components which hardly merit the term "architecture".
In the past one could always peer happily into the ground floor rooms, vicariously enjoying the life within. In turn one provided a passing spectacle for the inhabitants who sat in the windows. All this is gone. The entrances have become an occasional hole for office workers, vehicles or garbage. A walk is without incident, flanked by blank walls or strident shop windows with their dazzling display of cut rate promotions. At the other extreme, the upper floors which once were homes, have become store rooms, and the multiple shops, which are the same in every town, extend over an ever increasing floor area, measured in the return of pounds per square foot, and a stock consisting only of fast moving items. The goods formerly made by local craftsmen, are replaced by plastics from central factories, contributing to the economics of expendability and waste. The street is mainly for transportation, especially those leading to the car parks, and true pedestrian joys are confined to the shopping precincts. Thus is our environment coarsened and pauperised. Once again tidiness and simple mindedness have taken over. Social mobility has been confined to moving away, rather than adapting the dwellings. Classes are segregated into council or privately developed estates. The old people are isolated into accommodation specially provided, which if it is away from the centre, is hit by declining public transport services. Society tends to be broken up into areas classified by age and occupation. In the residential areas, developed about a hundred years ago, family houses set in large gardens are being sought for redevelopment, either with a group of small houses or in blocks of flats. A certain amount of this is inevitable and necessary, but it must stop before the whole area becomes down graded. The tree covered slopes surrounding Winchester are now threatened as sites for enormous blocks of flats. Such developments would destroy the character of Winchester as a town in the country. The scale, and methods of new building, seldom blend happily with existing houses. In this way, individual character is squeezed out of an historic town. The reorganisation of local government would seem likely to stimulate the growth of more large office blocks, both for the County and the District. The Hospital poses a special problem. Scheduled to be rebuilt over a period of twenty years, its form will De, naturally enough, dictated by the rapid changes in medical science which will be taking place during the same period.
The theme of this article has been forcefully illustrated this year in the exhibitions mounted in the Guildhall Picture Gallery "The Prospect of Winchester" and in the Public Library, "The Changing Face of Winchester", both of which have underlined the necessity of the Preservation Trust.