Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area · Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area (designated in...

Nuneaton Town CentreConservation Area March 2009

Appraisal and Management Proposals Draft for Public Consultation

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PART ONE : THE APPRAISAL1.0 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

PART 1

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Conservation areas are designated under the provisions of Section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 where they are defined as ‘[areas] of special architectural and historic interest the character and appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance”

This document is an appraisal of the special architectural and historic interest of the Nuneaton Town Centre Conservation Area (designated in 1979 and extended in 1987 (1)) and immediately adjacent areas currently lying outside the present conservation area boundary. It seeks to define and describe the area’s 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 periodic future review to take account of any significant change in the area concerned. It is anticipated that much of the appraisal in part one will remain relevant over a longer period than management proposals in part two.

The appraisal is not intended to be wholly comprehensive in its contents, and failure to mention any particular building, feature, or space should not be taken to imply that it is of no interest. It is currently in draft form and comments on its contents are invited.

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2.0 SUMMARY OF SPECIAL INTEREST

2.1 Principal Features of Special Architectural and Historic Interest2

• Street pattern of the medieval town, part of which has its origins in the Anglo- Saxon pre-urban village settlement of Eaton.

• Large, later infilled market place attesting the commercial importance of the medieval town to its founders the Priory of St Mary and its parent abbey of Fontevrault in France.

• Medieval Grade 1 listed Church of St Nicholas standing somewhat isolated on the edge of the

town. (2)

• Listed buildings associated with the church including the 17th century former vicarage and the earlier and later grammar school buildings. (3, 4&5)

• Variety of late-Victorian and Edwardian civic and commercial buildings in the town centre. No unified building type or style but the more important are generally built of red brick with terracotta or stone detailing. (6&7)

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1 Currently draft proposals2 The omission of any particular feature here or elsewhere in

the document does not imply it is of no interest

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Existing Nuneaton Conservation Area Boundary designated in 1979 and extended in 1987.

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• Examples of successful late 19th /early 20th 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)

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

3 E. A. Veasey Nuneaton A History p97

rapidly accompanied by much rebuilding of its relatively run-down old centre. Expansion 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 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

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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 the rapid expansion and population growth of what had been essentially a small market town up until the late 19th century. As the town grew and made greater demands on public services

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4 It is likely that there was a church on the site of the present building (which dates from the mid 14th century) before the medieval town was laid out but no evidence of an earlier building has been yet found.

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Extract fro 1902 OS Plan with the extent of the original medieval market place indicated in yellow

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.

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and governance, public buildings were repeatedly replaced on different sites on an ad-hoc basis as and when new larger plots became available and resources permitted, so that today they appear scattered throughout the town.

Though partially obscured and fragmented by road schemes and commercial redevelopment of the last century, the town centre retains most of the major elements of its medieval plan. This comprises its street network converging on the market place whose principle components are the market place itself and the main street, Abbey Street. One other major element of the medieval plan however has now mostly disappeared. This was the pattern of long and narrow rectangular plots to properties lining the major streets and the market place. They created a varied fine ‘grain’ pattern of historic development that was still evident in street plans of the town up to the mid 20th century (20). Most plots have been amalgamated and the historic boundaries between them removed as the scale of commercial development increased during the 20th century. Small groups survive on the south west side of Market Place and along the north side of Abbey Street. Evidence of their former existence elsewhere is reflected in the width and variety of surviving traditional building frontages.

During the later 19th and early 20th century, the character of Nuneaton changed dramatically and rapidly from a small semi-rural market town to a commercial urban centre. Important civic and commercial architectural contributions were made during the interwar years but after the Second World War the quality and standard of design and construction has been disappointing .

It is principally these features - the surviving elements of its medieval town plan together with the legacy of pre-second world war buildings, the majority of them forming rows along its principal commercial streets, that make up most of the special architectural and historic interest of conservation area within the ring road today.

Beyond the ring road the special character of the conservation area resides in the parkland landscape of Nuneaton’s Edwardian Riversley Park, with adjacent open green spaces, a series 19th century buildings lining its western flank, and particularly in a small enclave of historic buildings clustered around the parish church of St Nicholas.

3.0 ASSESSING SPECIAL INTEREST

3.1 LOCATION AND SETTING

Nuneaton is located in northern Warwickshire one mile to the south of the A5 (Roman Watling Street) that forms the County’s northern boundary with Leicestershire. It lies eight miles to the north of Coventry being almost connected to that city by a string of former mining settlements including Bedworth and Keresley that stand on the East Warwickshire Coalfield (21).

The town is also situated at a convergence of ancient road routes on the River Anker indicating that it was historically an important river crossing point for the area. The river is however very difficult to detect within the town centre today though in the past it was responsible for extensive and repeated flooding of commercial streets. (25)

Nuneaton lies on flat land in a slight hollow at an elevation of 270 ft on the eastern edge of the East Warwickshire Plateau. The latter is a rural, rolling upland area of dispersed settlement covering North Warwickshire and forming part of the historic Arden to the west. It has been important to the town’s past industrial economy providing sources of stone (including granite), clay, and particularly coal. The plateau has at the same time acted as a barrier to communication between the town and Birmingham to the west. To the north the landscape comprises of the lower lying and more open clay plains of Leicestershire and pastureland of Staffordshire, while to the south and east lies the Warwickshire Feldon, a landscape region historically of open fields and villages important for grain production.

The Conservation Area lies at the heart of the town, itself at the centre of a somewhat sprawling settlement comprising of large areas of late 19th and early 20th century red brick urban terraces and interwar and later 20th century suburbs.

Within the ring road the majority of the

conservation area comprises of traditional urban streets with continuous frontages. Because of this, and because of its flat topography, there are no views or vistas of particular note within, into, or out of the area.

Beyond the ring road the landscape of the conservation area is more green and open, as it

includes an extensive area of Edwardian parkland and the adjacent playing field of the former King Edward 6th School to the south east of the town centre.

Today the principal functions of the town inside the ring road are commercial (shopping and leisure), civic, professional, and financial. Nuneaton’s standing as a regional shopping destination has been boosted with the recent development of the Ropewalk shopping centre to the west of the town within the ring road and outside the conservation area. The town’s historic

market function is however still maintained with a well-attended outdoor street market held on Wednesdays and Saturdays along The Market Place and Queens Road (22).

3.2 ORIGINS AND HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Nuneaton is first recorded as Eaton from the Anglo Saxon elements ‘ea’ referring to water (the river), and ‘tun’ meaning farmstead. A nucleated settlement was probably in existence by the ninth century in the vicinity of St Nicholas Church to the east of the later medieval town. It has been suggested5 that it lay along a principal street - Church Street and Bond End -, with Vicarage Street and Back Street comprising its back lanes6. The Domesday survey of 1086 indicates the settlement had a population of 120-150 people, mostly tenant farmers, and a mill is recorded though not a church.

Moves towards urbanization began soon after the title of Lord of the Manor passed to the

5 E. A. Veasey Nuneaton A History p36 The historic pattern is no longer recognisable due to the

ring road, destruction by enemy action during World War II, and commercial redevelopment

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Location Map

7 Burgage plots represented a form of land ownership evolve in the Middle Ages specifically to attract traders to settle in new towns. Anyone who acquired a burgage plot escaped agricultural duties by paying an annual rent to the Lord of the Manor. Burgage tenure also afforded its holders the

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French abbey of Fontevrault in or about 1155. The mother abbey founded Nuneaton Priory, a Benedictine nunnery whose remains lie in Manor Court Road half-a-mile to the north west of the town centre (23). It was one of only four in England. From this foundation the developing settlement became known as Nuneaton. As the abbey’s largest endowment in Britain, the manor’s economic exploitation was important and this is strongly reflected in the Priory’s plan for the new town.

Shortly after obtaining rights from the King to hold markets around1160, the priory set about the radical re-planning and extension of the existing settlement. This comprised principally of laying out the market place on the opposite (west) bank of the River Anker to the Saxon area of occupation and establishing Abbey Street as the main street of the new town. The latter supplanted Church Street and, as its name suggests, it led directly to the Abbey, from where it went on to Atherstone. Along it and around the market place were laid out a very regular series of burgage plots7 each 50 feet wide and around 150 deep, and to their rear, on the north side of the street, ran the long back lane still known as Burgage Walk marking the northern boundary of the town and the start of the open fields beyond (24).

This 12th century layout thus shifted the focus of the town away from the area around Church Street to the new market square lying at the confluence of all major through routes. It was a plan that remained remarkably little altered over the next eight centuries until the 20th century.

important added freedom selling and buying plots thereby facilitating economic mobility. A charter of 1227 states that burgage plots held from the Prior and Prioress of Nuneaton attracted the same rights and benefits as those held by the Prior of Coventry.

1954 OS Plan showing much of the medieval plan including burgage plots still intact

And while the late Victorian period saw rapid expansion beyond Nuneaton’s medieval extent from the 1880s along with much intensification and rebuilding within it, this largely respected the ancient pattern of streets and plots.

The economy of Nuneaton had a significant base in agriculture up to the mid 17th century. While half the recorded working population at this time comprised of trades and craftsman, one third were still engaged in agriculture. During the 18th century, though, industrialization was in the ascendancy. With enclosure first of the open fields in 1733 and then the commons in 1801, there was a consequent need for those dispossessed of their rights to the land to earn a living by alternative means. By 1851 only five per cent of the recorded workforce still earned a living from farming, while nearly half were engaged in the town’s principal industry - silk ribbon weaving. Other cottage scale industries included hatting (spreading from Atherstone), leather working, and needle production.

There are records of silk ribbon weaving in Nuneaton from the mid 17th century moving out from the main centre of production in Coventry. It had developed to become a sizeable local industry by the end of the18th century, but was very much subject to the vagaries of market forces and went through a number of slumps in the 19th century. The industry finally collapsed as a result of cheap foreign imports in the 1860s, and much of Nuneaton’s industrial workforce, (along with those in neighbouring Coventry, Bedworth and Bulkington) consequently suffered much hardship. Between 1861 and 1871 there was a fall in population at a time when nationally it was growing rapidly.

Despite a rising population up to the mid 19th century, the town had not expanded to any great extent physically beyond its late 16th century boundaries until the late 19th century8. Many of the poorest workers were housed in appalling cramped and insanitary conditions in courts behind houses concentrated particularly along Abbey Street. It was not until the later 19th century that the Local Board of Health (established in the 1848) acquired powers sufficient to begin tackling the problem. Only

by the mid-1930s was satisfactory replacement housing made available, and not until the 1950s that the last of the courts were finally removed.

Coal had been exploited in the Nuneaton area for many centuries previously, for as documentary sources record, it was being mined from as early as the 13th century, though on a very small scale9. It began to increase from the late 16th century with improved methods of extraction, and the industry may have contributed to the town’s slow rise in population over the next two centuries.

However the 1851 census records only twenty five miners living in the town demonstrating that its contribution to the local economy was still modest even as late as the mid 19th century.

The picture changed radically with the coming of the railways and improved mining methods that allowed the discovery and exploitation of deeper lying coal measures after 1850. Owing to its strategic location on the national rail network, and to a new direct line to Birmingham in 1862, access to huge new markets was suddenly opened up for coal, clay and its derivative manufactures - brick and tile. This together with local entrepreneurship (particularly the lead shown by one Reginald Stanley), and increasing mechanization, led to the late-Victorian and Edwardian town ‘boom’ of the 1890s and 1900s.

With the burgeoning extractive industries and new brick and tile works and their demand for more and more labour, housing provision for the working classes was a major concern for local government of the day. The imposition of Public Health Acts actively prevented private landlords from building more of the notorious squalid courts at the back of houses fronting Abbey Street. Consequently streets of red brick by-law terrace housing subsequently sprang up around the historic centre constructed in the main from materials locally won and worked, many from the brick factories of Reginald Stanley.

Expansion around the historic core was accompanied by fast moving commercial redevelopment within it. By the 1930s the character of Nuneaton’s historic heart had been almost completely transformed from a small,

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8 A survey of landholding by the Lord of the Manor Marmaduke Constable in 1543 shows that the layout and extent of the town at that time was not significantly different to that in the early

1880s - see E. A. Veasey Nuneaton A History pp38-42

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relatively poor, run-down and predominantly residential town centre, to a comparitively prosperous commercial one, complete with chain-stores, theatres, hotels, a picture house, banks, and public buildings.

The twentieth century saw the town attempting to come to terms with ever increasing levels of car traffic passing through its medieval street layout, and its inherited slum housing. These problems together with the destruction of the eastern third of the town centre in air raids in World War II, and the newly bestowed powers on the local authority planning department, led directly to plans for wholesale redesign of major areas of the town centre in the immediate post-war years.

A town master plan by the Borough Council together with a ‘town centre design’ by Frederick Gibberd of 1947 laid the basis for much that followed over the next fifty years. The plans were devised at a time when policy makers and designers generally gave little consideration to the historic environment. As a consequence it rapidly became a casualty of the two main urban drivers of change during the last century - commerce and the car. A western loop road, one of the master plan’s main proposals, would subsequently develop over the following decades into an almost complete town centre ring road beloved by highway engineers from the 1930s to the 70s. This disrupted the intricate medieval pattern of streets, cutting them off from their approach roads and isolating the centre from its surroundings. It left awkward shaped areas of land for use either as surface level car parks, or to house large freestanding buildings in precinct-like spaces. And it reinforced yet further the isolation of the parish church from the rest of the town, which found itself in the early 1950s standing by a large and busy traffic island facing blocks of new local authority flats designed by Gibberd. (26)

Commercial redevelopment associated with post-war reconstruction and street widening schemes demanded ever larger buildings and rear servicing. These disregarded the intricacy and variety generated by respecting the narrow plot divisions of the medieval plan in building floorplans and elevations. As a result the human scale of significant lengths of street frontages was lost together with the fine grain of the building pattern along Church Street, the south side of Bridge Street and the Market Place, the north side of Newdegate Street, and along parts of Queen Street and Abbey Street. (27)

The rush to modernize and keep up with retailing fashions in the post-war era was not a new local phenomenon for the Victorians and Edwardians had done the same. But the nature and scale of redevelopment fuelled by the prospect of

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large financial gains for developers in the 1960s, represented a significant and unwelcome break with the past. The sterility, harshness, lack of quality and architectural good manners in many buildings of that period focused public and local political attention on the value of Nuneaton’s surviving older buildings. This eventually resulted the designation of a town centre conservation area in 1979 and its extension in 1987.

Subsequent redevelopment has tended to respect the contribution made by later 19th and early 20th century buildings even though their individual intrinsic architectural value might be modest by national standards (28). The construction of the ring road, while damaging to townscape in many ways, has nevertheless allowed the pedestrianisation of the centre. And although the paving schemes themselves may now be a little dated in design and use of materials, the general amenity of shopping streets has undoubtedly greatly improved over the last two decades. In the new century there is strong and still growing public support for the preservation and enhancement of the town’s pre-1945 buildings and every indication that in future this important local heritage will be better treated and appreciated than it has been in the past.

3.3 INTRODUCTION TO CHARACTER AREAS

Character areas are sub-areas of the conservation area that are distinguished or defined by various attributes or characteristics derived in the main from past and/or present land uses and their related patterns of ownership. These are reflected to varying degrees in the layout or pattern of the town’s buildings and spaces, and in their individual appearance and character.

The Nuneaton Conservation Area can be divided into five character areas. (29) These are:

Character Area 1: The Market Place and Commercial Core; This comprises of the heart of the medieval town covering the present day pedestrianised shopping centre. It contains late Victorian and early 20th century buildings mixed with later 20th century development forming continuous frontages along its principal streets.

Character Area.2: The Civic and Administrative Area; This was formerly part of a fringe area to the south of the old

town liable to flooding and occupied by industrial buildings and gardens to Church Street properties. From the 1920s it was gradually developed mainly for civic and office uses including The Council House of 1934. It was the principal subject area of the influential, though only partially implemented, post-war town centre design by Frederick Gibberd and RC Moon. The development pattern they adopted was typical of new planning ideas of the time, being predominantly one of large free-standing buildings set in precinct like spaces rather than buildings enclosing streets.

Character Area 3: Riversley Park ,

George Elliot Gardens, and Coton Road. An area comprising of Edwardian parkland and adjacent post-war gardens along the river Anker. It also includes housing development facing the park along the west side of Coton Road - the main approach road to the town from Coventry and the south

Character Area 4: The Park Fringe An area along the east side of the river Anker

historically liable to flooding and therefore not much developed before the 20th century. A large playing field to the former King Edward 6th Grammar School provides open green space between Riversley Park and the busy Attleborough Road. Mature trees within and around the area make an important landscape contribution to the setting of Areas 3&5. The openness of the area also provides a welcome contrast to the dense urban nature of he town beyond the conservation area though its inherent architectural and historic interest is limited.

Character Area 5: The Church, Vicarage and Grammar Schools. A loose grouping of historically related buildings of special architectural and historic interest and representing Nuneaton’s oldest and finest buildings.

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10 Effective flood prevention measures protecting this area were only put in place in the late 1970s. Prior to that time the town centre was subject to frequent heavy flooding

3.4 CHARACTER AREA 1: THE MARKET PLACE AND HISTORIC COMMERCIAL CORE

Principal features

Principal features of special interest of this area and its characteristics include:

• Planned medieval street pattern of five principal routes converging on the market place at the heart of the town.

• Very large original rectangular medieval market place later filled with a planned rectangular island block of tenements at its centre

• Broad principal streets of irregular width which until the later 19th century narrowed markedly where they joined the Market Place. This is still discernable along Queens Road and Abbey Street.

• Some characterful late-Victorian and Edwardian buildings including several associated with Reginald Stanley one of the town’s most important political and industrial figures.

• Surviving rows of pre-1939 buildings lining stretches of the principal streets.

• A good small group of late 19th / early 20th century bank buildings on prominent corner sites in and around the Market Place

• Good representation of Interwar buildings throughout the character area many of which retain original features typical of the period on their facades.

• Examples of early-mid 20th century department stores evolving from successful smaller shops

• The clock tower to the old former town hall in Market Place - an important local landmark

Location and Topography

This character area has a roughly rectangular shape orientated east-west and occupies the central third of the area enclosed by the ring road (29). It includes the Market Place and the five streets that converge on it – Abbey Street, Newdegate Street, Queens Road, Bridge Street, and Coventry Street.

Uses

The character area covers most of the primary commercial and retail area of the town, while parts of Abbey Street, Queens Road, and Newdegate Street are secondary retail areas. All streets are pedestrianised though Coventry Street partially admits vehicles accessing car parks and rear servicing yards to shops along Market Place. A bustling street market operates on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Historic Development

The Market Place

Nuneaton is located at the meeting of two major landscape regions - the Arden, a rolling and at one time densely wooded upland region to the west, and the Feldon, historically a landscape of open fields to the south and east. Each produced different goods for exchange with the other – timber and cattle in the case of the Arden, and grain from the Feldon. This required urban markets, which may help explain not only why the town was established here in the first place, but also why it continued to endure over a long period.

The market place was the economic raison d’etre of the 12th century new town plan. It was originally a very large rectangular space with its long axis orientated east-west covering the area shaded yellow in the Figure (19). It was entered at each of its four corners - an arrangement typical of continental market places - and from the middle of its southern side. Each of these entrances was narrow, both to control traffic and to collect tolls. It is likely that not long after it had been laid out, a planned rectangular island block of tenements was created at its centre to maximise the rent roll for the Abbey. It has since largely remained in this form with redevelopment over the centuries generally maintaining the historic building lines of the original medieval layout.

Queens Road

Building along Queens Road (formerly Wash Lane) was only partial until Wash Brook, which ran alongside, was culverted in the later 19th century. Before then the street was prone to flooding - a problem only relatively recently overcome10.. While a broad street, its entrance

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Conservation Area Character Areas

into the Market Place was very narrow until widened in 1909. (30) In the late 19th century it accommodated the then recently built offices of the Nuneaton Urban District Council, formed in 1893, which also incorporated a fire station. This and other Victorian buildings on the south side of the street were nearly all cleared in the 1960s for shopping development. (31) On the north side several Victorian buildings survive comprising plain and modest two-storey houses of c.1860-80 with later shops on the ground floor (32) - typical of much of the street until the interwar period. Indeed the road west of Stratford Street retained a predominantly residential character up until that time.

Abbey Street

Abbey Street has been the town’s principal street since the 12th century, its importance signaled by its generous width. From the later 19th century its historic pre-eminence was reinforced by the addition of a small number of impressive civic buildings, most of which were connected with the town’s leading entrepreneur, industrialist and local Liberal politician Reginald Stanley.

At the same time, the character and appearance of Abbey Street was rapidly transforming from a predominantly residential to mainly commercial street. Substantial three, and three-and-a-half storey stores with living accommodation on upper floors, replaced earlier two and three-storey Georgian and pre-Georgian houses. Examples of sizable purpose built stores appearing at this time include the present Greenwoods (formerly FR Jones) at 1-3 Abbey Street (33), and John Wilkinson’s haberdashery store (34) at 118 Abbey Street with its faded painted advertisements for men’s suits still visible on the brick façade. The latter faced Wilkinson’s furniture store on the other side of the road at 17 Abbey Street which was replaced in 1903 by the present store whose facade is conspicuously glass fronted up to the second floor (35) (it lies outside the current conservation area). This building was subsequently taken over by the Co-operative Society.

The Co-operative Society was a significant presence in the street from the early 20th century and their premises (also currently outside the conservation area) grew rapidly to occupy a large section of the south side of the street eventually extending into Queens Road (9&13).

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Early - mid 20th century photographs of Abbey Street (36) show an urban scene of impressive scale for a modest sized industrial town attributable to the a small number of substantial buildings of the late 19th century. These include the ornate former Liberal Club of 1894(7), the Wesleyan Methodist Church (unfortunately demolished in 1960) with its lofty spire on the corner of Stratford Street, and the former Gate Temperance Hotel also on a prominent corner site (6). All of these were built at the instigation or under the influence of Reginald Stanley who may have been trying to reinforce the status of Abbey Street as the town’s principal street and give it more civic presence at the turn of the last century.

As the later 20th century progressed, retailing in the street went into decline west of Stratford Street, and it developed a subdued almost deserted character that persists to a degree today. The lack of activity was a consequence of the construction of the ring road, which removed its function as a primary through route - although pedestrianisation, introduced as a consequence soon afterwards, has improved the shopping environment.

Bridge Street

Up to1960, Bridge Street was a short narrow street running over the River Anker, connecting Market Place with Church Street. In late 1959 all

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buildings along its south side were demolished for street widening to ease traffic congestion as advocated by the post-war master plan and Gibberd’s town design of 194711. The Market Place and Bridge Street consequently lost their separate identities to become one longer wide street. The north side of the Bridge Street/ Market Place by contrast escaped major redevelopment and the amalgamation of plots and consequently retains a more varied series of frontages dating from the early -mid

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19th century through to the 1930’s. (37) Most notable historically is The George Elliot Hotel (38) formerly ‘the Bull’ to which Nuneaton’s most famous literary author alluded in her novel Scenes of Clerical Life – there called ‘the Red Lion’. It represents one of the earliest surviving buildings in the town centre.

Newdegate Street

Arguably Newdegate Street suffered even more from the post-war development boom of the 1960s than did Bridge Street. Its northern side between Abbey Gate and Harefield Road was replaced in that decade with the Heron Way Shopping Centre (currently outside the conservation area) while the south side was nearly all redeveloped with commercial office blocks. Newdegate Hotel one of the town centre’s more imposing buildings was lost at this time though it had been partly redeveloped when Harefield Road was created in the early 20th century (39) The latter opened up the north side of what had previously been a small enclosed space known as Newdegate Square which in turn led on to New Bridge Street. These both now form part of Newdegate Street.

Stratford Street

Laid out in mid 19th century, the street has been the subject of much rebuilding in the latter part of the last century so that nearly all of its buildings are recent. Its most notable building is the surviving former Liberal Club on the corner with Abbey Street.

Coventry Street

Coventry Street formed the principal southern approach and entrance to the south side of the Market Place. Originally, as with all historic entrances to the Market Place, it was a narrow street until widening in the late 1920s. Its significance historically is indicated by the fact that the medieval market cross once stood at the junction of the two.

Late 19th century photographs illustrate that the street still had a predominantly residential character at that time with houses and gardens flanking the road immediately north of the confluence of the River Anker and Wash Brook and its weir (40). The latter, which ran immediately south of Mill Walk, was culverted by 1926.

11 The scale of the loss is tellingly illustrated by John Burton in his book Nuneaton Past and Present particularly the photographs at the bottom of pages 73 and 76.

A few years later houses along its west side were removed, and buildings fronting the Market Place truncated for street widening. Subsequent redevelopment included the George Elliot buildings- a substantial parade of shops with offices above of 1928 which is locally listed (41).


Within the character area buildings form rows with continuous frontages lining both sides of its constituent streets, and are a mix of two, three, and four storey buildings. There are big scale changes apparent between the human scale of traditional pre-war buildings and the larger more alien scale of the majority of post war developments, particularly those along the south side of Bridge Street/ Market Place, and the north side of Newdegate Street. The latter typically have wide frontages that have ignored historic plot divisions originating from the medieval town. Some have strong horizontal elements such as canopies running along their length (for example those along the south side of Bridge Street and continuing into Church Street (27 & 31), and they bear none of the intricate and visually enriching architectural decoration found on traditional pre-war buildings especially late-Victorian and Edwardian facades (42 & 42a). The result, where such buildings predominate or are to be found in numbers, is a rather stark and barren streetscape.

The area, despite being at the heart of the town, has no perceivable centre. Its civic or public spaces, other than its wide streets, are small and not well defined. The junction of Coventry Street and Market Place for example, whilst holding a water feature on the site of the historic market cross and marked by the tower of the former town hall, is sensed merely as a road junction and not as a space distinguishable from the rest of the Market Place. Indeed since the widening of Bridge Street in 1960, it is difficult to appreciate that Market Place is a space distinguishable from the rest of that street and Queens Road.

There is no predominant architectural style within the area. Victorian and Edwardian buildings are often an eclectic mixture of various architectural sources and styles. Materials are mainly brick ,often with some stone dressings to window heads and cills, but ‘black and white’ mock-timber-

framing also occasionally appears. They range from relatively plain and ordinary brick frontages (33) to the showy and even eccentric with much

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ornamentation ( 6, 7, 42 & 42a). The banks in particular often sport lavish architectural ornament in stone or terracottta(43). Inter-war buildings by contrast are typically much more restrained usually adopting a form of ‘stripped-down’ Classicism; whilst post-war buildings generally eschew architectural detailing altogether and are therefore essentially ‘astylar’ or without style.

There are very few buildings earlier than the late-19th century in the town centre. They include 29-30 Market Place built around the mid-19th century, (44), 3-4 Bridge Street of about the same date (45), and The George Elliot Hotel of the early 19th century (38). One or two others, such as 6 Market Street, pre-date 1850 but have been so radically altered that it is difficult to tell their age.

The most architecturally accomplished buildings in the town are indisputably its banks (10, 11, 42 & 67). They were built at the turn of the last century mostly on corner sites in and around the Market Place, and they are all on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural Interest, Grade 2. Whilst not particularly large buildings they nevertheless impress with their assured designs and excellent craftsmanship. The Bradford and Bingley building, 35 Newdegate Street, is a particularly fine example built in the English ‘Wrenaissance’ style imitating buildings of the late 17th century (11 & 57).

The best concentrations of buildings are to be

found on the east side of Newdegate Square continuing into Newdegate Street (46&47), and along the north side of the Bridge Street and sections of Market Place (14&37).

The better quality individual non-statutorily listed buildings include the former Gate Temperance Hotel in Abbey Gate (6), 25 Market Place (59 & 61), 29-30 Market Place & 31 Newdegate Street (44), George Elliot Hotel (formerly the Bull) (38), the former Liberal Club (7), and former Scala Cinema (49) in Abbey Street, and the Art Deco Co-operative Society building in Queens Road (13).

Also among other buildings particularly worthy of mention for their architectural historic interest are two surviving groups of buildings that developed into early department stores - the former JC Smiths (Debenhams) (50 - 51) at the

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east end of the town centre in Bridge Street/Newdegate Street/ Market Square, and the Co-operative Society in Abbey Street/Queens Road at the opposite west end (9,13, 35, 57 &64). They illustrate well the 20th century retailing trend for bigger and bigger retail floor areas, achieved at that time by buying up adjacent

shops and amalgamating their interiors, and attest the success of these two businesses in the first part of the last century, being able to acquire several contiguous buildings and plots. Often amalgamated stores were eventually replaced with a single large building or re-fronted with a new unified street frontage. In these two cases, though, this did not happen and the varied building frontages of constituent late19th and early 20th century buildings have remained, adding to the variety and interest of the street scene.

In parts of Queens Road and along Stratford

Street two storey buildings are predominant and many are 20th century and of little or no architectural or historic interest.

All streets have been pedestrianised and their paving and landscaping schemes are now appearing rather dated in design. They comprise mostly of wall-to-wall concrete brick-size paviours while some of the more recent are of coloured clay (53). Street trees have been abundantly planted, though many have grown too big for their locations and/or have been poorly sited directly in front of some of the towns better building facades (54).

Although the town straddles the River Anker, the watercourse is narrow and views of it within the town centre are limited and generally unprepossessing.

The Market Place & Bridge Street

Bridge Street and Market Place have lost their individual identities as a result of street widening of the former in 1959/60. The two are therefore considered together here as a single entity.

There is a stark contrast along the street between north and south side (14 & 27). The north side retains continuous and varied rows of traditional three-storey 19th century and early 20th c buildings. All are built at a human scale using traditional materials. Most employ a familiar architectural vocabulary derived from Classicism to ornament facades with elements such as eaves cornices and window architraves. This adds interest to facades when viewed at close quarters. Buildings on the south side by contrast are at a much larger scale; over-scaled in fact for the street and their historic neighbours opposite. They have ignored the plot divisions of

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Next to this are 26/27 Market Place, part of the old former Town Hall façade of the late 19th century, and again locally listed. The upper floors of the elevation, display a mix of details derived from Classical and other sources and they make an significant steetscape contribution, though overlarge street trees partly obscure them from view (58). The existings shopfronts to the very tall ground floor are poor visually The remaining third of the former Town Hall frontage is surmounted by a prominent lead and timber clock tower which is an important local landmark and skyline feature (59&60). It stands next to 25 Market Place (48, 59 & 61), a building that occupies a prominent position terminating northward views along Coventry Street. This building is very conservative in its use of a Queen Anne / early Georgian architectural style for its inter-war date, and may perhaps be taking its cue from the Edwardian late 17th century style of architecture displayed at 35 Newdegate Street (11&57). It also complements the more typical for the period Neo-Georgian Town Hall in Coventry Street (12) (see Area 2 below).

earlier buildings thereby coarsening the ‘grain’ of building development and eradicating all traces of medieval plot boundaries. Elevations lack traditional detailing and architectural ornament and present little or no interest to the eye when viewed from either near or far.

An interesting collection of buildings comprising the former JC Smiths Department store, now Debenhams, occupies the length of built frontage on the north side of the street east of the town bridge. The most notable is a late Victorian red brick and stone building with large-bracketed timber eaves typical of the 1880s commercial architecture (51 & 55). This currently lies outside the conservation area.

Further west the George Elliot Hotel together with 3&4 Bridge Street are an important visual presence being among the few early-mid 19th century buildings (parts possibly earlier) to survive in the town. They present a long, three- storey, elegantly proportioned, stucco façade to the street with simple Classical detailing, in the Georgian style (56). This block is handsomely terminated by the architecturally accomplished Bradford and Bingley Building. (57)

Occupying the opposite corner site to Newdegate Street is the locally listed 29-30 Market Place & 31Newdegate Street of c. 1860. It is simply designed with a restrained Classical three-storey façade, this time in brick with painted stone dressings. Its rounded corner, articulated brick facades, and boldly projecting cornice ‘turns the corner’ with Newdegate Street in a pleasant manner. (44)

Next to this are 26/27 Market Place, part of the old former Town Hall façade of the late 19th century, and again locally listed. The upper floors of the elevation, display a mix of details derived from Classical and other sources and they make an significant steetscape contribution, though overlarge street trees partly obscure them from view (58). The existings shopfronts to the very tall ground floor are poor visually The remaining third of the former Town Hall frontage is surmounted by a prominent lead and timber clock tower which is an important local landmark and skyline feature (59&60). It stands next to 25 Market Place (48, 59 & 61), a building that occupies a prominent position terminating northward views along Coventry Street. This building is very conservative in its use of a Queen

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Anne / early Georgian architectural style for its inter-war date, and may perhaps be taking its cue from the Edwardian late 17th century style of architecture displayed at 35 Newdegate Street (11&57). It also complements the more typical for the period Neo-Georgian Town Hall in Coventry Street (12) (see Area 2 below).

Queens Road

Queens Road has always had less civic presence than Abbey Street with a greater preponderance of lesser quality two-storey domestic Victorian buildings (62). Only part of its northern side is currently included in the conservation area and older buildings along it are all of this type. They generally fail to provide a satisfactory sense of enclosure owing to their low height relative to street width particularly where the latter broadens just beyond the Market Place. They have also generally suffered from ill considered and unsympathetic alterations in the past, particularly to upper floor windows. Despite their shortcomings surviving Victorian buildings within the street are valuable historic assets that need to be retained and enhanced by the reinstatement of missing original features and improvements to their shop fronts. The new Royal Bank of Scotland at 11-17 Queens Road provides a good recent example of how the townscape potential of these buildings can be better realised. (28 & 32)

The architectural quality of modern buildings, which are in the majority in the street, is generally indifferent both in terms of design and choice of materials. They have tended to follow national fashionable commercial architectural trends that date quickly and weaken local distinctiveness. Those on the south side of the street and currently outside the conservation area are particularly poor.

Also outside the current boundary on the north side is one of Nuneaton’s most distinctive buildings – the Co-op building of 1927. Though its ground floor has been altered, its striking curved brick Art Deco façade contributes significantly to the interest of the street scene and it is a local landmark despite its relatively modest size. (13)

Abbey Street

This is a broad street adopting a sweeping northwestward curve. On the basis of its late Victorian and Edwardian commercial architecture,

it was clearly the most important street commercially, and the main thoroughfare of the town until the opening of the ring road. It is still a busy primary shopping area between the Market Place and Stratford Street but beyond the latter it has a somewhat lifeless and melancholy

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atmosphere. Its status here is now that of a secondary shopping street whose civic and commercial presence rapidly peters out as the ring road is approached.

Groups of predominantly three-storey and some two-storey19th and early 20th century commercial buildings continuously line the street with the occasional later 20th century

replacement (usually only two storeys high) (63). They provide a strong sense of enclosure until the ring road is reached. The best buildings in the street are two associated with Reginald Stanley - the exuberant and eccentric former Gate Temperance Hotel on the corner with Stratford Street (6), and the more sober red brick and terracotta former Liberal Club (7). The latter was designed by his architect F J Yates of Birmingham who may also have designed the Hotel.

Among the street’s more notable commercial buildings are the collective façades that make up the present Co-op Department Store (currently outside the conservation area boundary). They stand along the curving alignment of the Abbey Street which gives them prominence in westerly views along the street from the east. They include a conspicuous Edwardian shopfront glazed over two storeys forming part of the three-storey Wilkinson’s furniture store of 1903 (35), Next door to this is the long and somewhat austere two-storey brick frontage of 22 Abbey Street with Classically derived detailing again of c. 1903 which was purposefully built as the Central Stores of the Nuneaton Co-operative Society Ltd (64). Its two-storey height is a little low for its length and satisfactory enclosure of the street but the block is nevertheless of value architecturally for its contribution to the group. This is followed by a three-storey end block of 1928 also for the Co-

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op.(65) in a typical stripped-down Classical style of the inter-war years.

Also worthy of mention is the locally listed former Scala Cinema of 1914 (49) notable in the townscape for its Classically derived façade

Shop fronts in the street are generally of poor quality many with plastic advertisement fascias sometimes in strident colours particularly to take- away food outlets that are common here (34 & 66).

The 1980s pedestrianised coloured concrete block paving scheme is now appearing worn and dated, and the injudicious planting of over-large street trees does not help to foster an atmosphere of commercial vitality. They tend to darken the street, obscure building facades, and shorten or block potentially attractive street vistas.

Newdegate Street

The street contains some of the best, along with arguably some of the worst, of Nuneatons buildings. What could have been a most satisfactory and pleasing area of townscape, building on the success of its bank architecture, was marred visually by the incongruous and out of scale 1960s Heron House commercial development on the north side of the street.

Architectural high points include 20 Newdegate Street (former HSBC Bank) (10) again occupying a prominent corner site, 39 (Hawkins) Newdegate Street, another former bank, which terminates views along Abbey Street and Newdegate Street from the west (67), and No. 35 Newdegate Street the Bradford and Bingley - yet again a bank holding a corner site (11 & 57).

Coventry Street

This is a broad and short street. Views northward are terminated by the north side of the Market Place in the form of the conspicuous and tall three-and-a-half-storey red brick Neo-Georgian façade of 25 Market Place, and part of the former town hall building with its distinctive clock tower (48 & 59).

The east side of the street is strongly and appropriately enclosed by an almost continuous run of tall three-storey buildings beginning with

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Barclays Bank –once again on a corner site with Market Place. It is a substantial ornate building in brick and terracotta, and very much in line with the exuberant commercial architectural fashion of the late 19th century (68). Following on after a narrow gap are the George Elliot Buildings of 1928 - again very typical of their period, with crisp hard-edged geometric forms making Classical references in their overall design and detailing, much of which survives remarkably intact including terracotta shop front surrounds to the ground floor, and original metal windows above (69).

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The east side is less successfully enclosed as a result of street widening in the inter-war period. This has left side elevations of buildings exposed that were never intended to be seen as part of a principal street frontage. The flat roofed and rendered two-storey elevations running back from 6 Market Place are poor visually both in scale and in their blank rendered facades that lack good quality architectural detailing. Next to it to the south stands another late 1920s commercial block 7-15 Coventry Street again quite well detailed and retaining many original features (70). Its height and scale though, being only two storeys, results in rather weak enclosure of the street. The shopfront to No.9 is included on the Local List.

The fountain at the junction of Coventry Street and Market Place is a popular public gathering point and sitting area and is a large feature for the space making for a rather cluttered streetscene. Also, because it is not sited in a well-defined outdoor space such as a public square, it appears to be somewhat arbitrarily sited and relates poorly to surrounding buildings.

Negative Features

• Out-of-scale, low quality 1960s and 1970s shopping development

• Loss of historic identity as a result of 20th century development

• Low quality concrete block paving of pedestrianised streets

• Poorly designed modern shop fronts especially in secondary shopping areas along Queens Road and Abbey Street

• Inappropriately sited and overlarge street trees• Loss of architectural details (windows etc to

upper floors and roof materials)

3.5 CHARACTER AREA 2: THE CIVIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE AREA

Principal features

• Post-war redevelopment of a bomb damaged area to the south and east of the town centre comprising mainly of large freestanding buildings of the 1960s

• Subject to design proposals by the Modernist architect and town planner Frederick Gibberd

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who attempted to create an identifiable civic centre for the town.

• Neo-Classical Council House designed by architects Peacock and Bewlay of Birmingham and built between 1931 and 1934. (12 & 71)

• Good small and concentrated group of late 19th century red brick and stone public buildings including the Congregational (now URC) Chapel in Chapel Street, and the former police station magistrates court, and gaol, at the corner of Chapel Street and Coton Road (72-74).


This character area forms a bi-lobed east-west area to the south of the town within the ring road from Coventry Road/ Coton Road/Chapel Street in the west to Vicarage Street/Ring Road in the east. It is interrupted at its middle by the incursion of the George Elliott memorial gardens that forms part of Character Area 3 (see below), and is bounded to the south by the ring road and to the north by Mill Walk/Mill Street

The area’s streets are Church Street, part of Coton Road, and Chapel Street


Most of this area was badly damaged by a heavy air raid in May1941, though the prominent and impressive interwar Council House survived. The area subsequently formed the major part of Frederick Gibberd and RC Moon’s ’s town centre design of 1947.This proposed an area of mostly civic and cultural buildings, together with gardens laid out along the River Anker thereby creating a green corridor linking the civic and commercial centre directly with Riversley Park.

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As envisaged in the plan (an early adoption of fashionable pre-war planning ideas derived from the French Modernist architect Le Corbusier) traditional streets were to be abandoned in favour of discrete buildings with precinct-like spaces flowing around them. These were to be grouped according to function into two related areas to form a new ‘central area proper’ for Nuneaton including, in the words of Gibberd, ‘shopping business administrative and cultural uses’.

As with nearly all of such plans, it assumed powers over private property rights and resources for its implementation that were just not available to the Local Authority of the time. Realisation of the Le Corbusian inspired vision was therefore only very partially achieved and there resulted a loose disjointed and generally unsatisfactory townscape comprising a rather incoherent collection of flat roofed buildings intermingled with surface level carparks, footpaths and service yards. (This is particularly noticeable in and around Church Street which has lost its identity physically as an important town street.) Only one or two public buildings proposed in the Gibberd plan materialized, though these were not located in their intended positions. The most noteworthy of them was Gibberds own library building of 1965 (75) now itself subject to proposals for demolition. Very few buildings were earmarked for retention; one was a prominent Victorian blue brick flour mill (76) by the river (probably on the site of a mill recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086), but even this was eventually replaced by an anonymous government office block (the present Job Centre) in 1973. Only the George Elliot Memorial Gardens abutting this building to the south and east of the river, which link up with Riversley Park beyond the ring road, has proved a truly positive legacy of the post-wars plans (see character area 3 below) (17).

Church Street Church Street together with Bond Gate was

probably the focus of the Saxon pre-urban settlement, though anything of historic or architectural significance above ground was obliterated either by enemy bombing or by subsequent post-war redevelopment. As a consequence the street now has very limited heritage significance. It appears as a series of unrelated short street sections - part pedestrian

precinct and part highway, the latter diverted to run around the 1960s post office to serve adjacent surface level car parks.

Despite these serious shortcomings, the potential inclusion in the conservation area of the length of the street between Mill Street and Bondgate would make better sense of the historic street layout.

Coton Road/Chapel Street The length of Coton Road down to the ring road

roundabout along with Chapel Street is included in this character area. Up until the late 19th century it had been largely undeveloped being an area prone to flooding. From that time it became an area for large religious and public buildings beginning with the police station, magistrates court and gaol on a triangular site at the junction of Chapel Street/Coventry Street/Coton Road (73 & 74). These were followed closely by the Coton Road Congregational Chapel of 1903, which replaced a late 18th century chapel on the same site (72). Following the culverting of Wash Brook south of Mill Walk, the opposite side of the street became an obvious site for the large and impressive Neo-Classical Georgian Town Hall of 1934. (71) In 1993 it was joined by a block of Council offices to the south.


The townscape character of this area comprises predominantly of a relatively loose aggregation of large discreet, mostly public buildings of mid-late 20th century date. They stand within a mixed setting of landscaped open space, car parks, streets, rear servicing areas to shops fronting the Market Place and riverside. Running through them is Mill Walk and Mill Street - part service road and part pedestrian footpath of poor general amenity that passes by and over a short, unprepossessing, heavily engineered section of the River Anker. The latter is traversed by a couple of poor quality concrete and metal pedestrian bridges of the mid – late 20th century.

To the east of this area, around the library and immediately west of the ring road (and continuing north beyond the present conservation area boundary), the townscape is very much one in transition and lacking a coherent identity.

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By contrast the most coherent area of townscape is the group of Victorian public buildings at the corner of Chapel Lane and Coton Road,

Important or key buildings are the Neo-Classical Council House of 1934 by Peacock and Bewlay , the above mentioned group of Victorian civic buildings comprising the former police station, magistrates court and gaol, and the near -contemporary buttressed and pinnacled ‘free-style’ Gothic Congregational (now URC) chapel in Chapel Street. All of the latter share the late Victorian fashion for brick facades dressed with stone or terracotta detailing. They also add significantly to the skyline interest of Coventry Street where the cupolas and fleches of the chapel and the former police station (Yorkshire Bank) together the clock tower in the Market Place combine to noteworthy townscape effect (77).

Negative Features

• Poor visual amenity of Mill Walk and Mill Street• Lack of coherent townscape along and to the

east of Church Street • ‘Temporary’ appearance and poor landscaping of

large surface level car-parks• Visually intrusive large traffic roundabout/highway

junctions • Poor treatment of River Anker along Mill Walk• Heavy traffic noise from the ring road• Unsightly and sterile rear service yards along Mill

Walk and Mill Street

3.6 CHARACTER AREA 3 RIVERSLEY PARK, GEORGE ELLIOT GARDENS, AND COTON ROAD.

Principal Features

• Edwardian Riversley Park retaining much of its original layout

• George Elliot Memorial Gardens linking Riversley Park to the town centre

• Art Gallery and Museum• The River Anker experienced as a significant

feature through the park• A series of varied 19th century buildings along

the west side of Coton Road

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An irregular linear area of land mostly lying along the west side of the river Anker, bounded to the west by Coton Road, to the east by Sainsbury’s Supermarket and King Edward VI playing field, to the south by the railway line, and to the north by Mill Walk.

Uses

The area comprises of nearly all parkland along the RiverAnker, with housing on the western periphery to the west side of Coton Road.


Until the late 19th most of this area comprised of undeveloped land liable to flooding. In the middle of the first decade of 20th century Alderman Edward Melly of Griff Collieries gave some 15 acres of land west of the river to Nuneaton Urban District Council. The donation was gratefully received, creating the opportunity to meet a need, long acknowledged by civic leaders of the day, to provide a park that would improve the health and well-being of the industrial town’s population particularly its working class.

The Council opened the park in 1907 and it included a bandstand, and facilities for boating on the River Anker. In 1917 an art gallery and museum (78) was added to the northern end, followed shortly by a granite cross Memorial to those who fell in the war of 1914-18 (79). The park has been further added-to and altered over the years; significant changes included the addition of a Garden of Memory opened in the mid1950s replacing a bowling green at its northern end and the loss of its main entrance when Coton Road was widened in c. 1971. Nevertheless despite later changes the park has retained the essentials of its Edwardian design with its structure of planting beds in formal areas, of winding walks among trees along the riverside, of broader open spaces for games and casual activity, and the bandstand facilitating the mixing of different social classes on Sunday outings.

Forming the western boundary to the park were rows or terraces of substantial Victorian housing fronting the east side of Coton Road. These were all cleared to provide a dual carriageway in the early 1970s and, as a result, the park now extends up to the roadside along this side of the road.

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Coton Road itself had developed as a pleasant broad and gently meandering residential street with wide pavements by the late 19th century. Several buildings along it date from that period but there is a small number of others of earlier 19th century date. While the houses on the east side were cleared, those on the west side largely remain.

The landscaped wedge of George Elliot gardens to the north of the park and the ring road (Vicarage Street) was planned as part of the Borough master plan and Gibberd’s town centre design of 1947. It serves essentially as an extension to Riversley Park bringing it virtually into the heart of the town and was arguably the most valuable legacy of post-war planning (80). It is a pity that the tall government office block that replaced the Victorian mill obscures views of the gardens from Mill Walk. If the site had remained undeveloped they would have truly brought the park into the town, and the amenity potential of the riverside could have been fully exploited.


This is an area of well-treed, landscaped, parkland through which runs the river Anker. Unlike in the town centre area the river here plays a prominent role in the landscape

The park comprises a series of formal and informal spaces articulated and adorned by trees and shrubs and linked by an intricate network of footpaths (81).

The formal gardens with traditional planting beds are laid out at the north end immediately to the south of the art gallery and museum building, which is placed on the garden’s central axis. Also on this axis and terminating it to the south is the granite cross Memorial of 1914-18 (79).

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The Art Gallery and Museum is a cuboidal building in red brick with Classical detailing in stone that has Mannerist touches such as large scale changes in its windows that echo French Neo-Classicism of the late 18th century (78). It forms a focal point and meeting place for the park.

The park extends across to the east side of the river where there are two bowling greens accessed by footbridges. The nearby pond is a former reservoir once serving the demolished Union Wool and Leather Company works, and belongs to Sainsbury’s supermarket.

Trees and water are in abundance creating a very attractive and relaxing environment close to the busy commercial centre of the town (82). To the west trees help to screen the busy traffic laden Coton Road from the body of the park, though Riversley House, an office block of the 1970s and its associated car park, are discordant elements.

The railway embankment provides strong green enclosure to the park along its southeast boundary whilst the King Edward VI playing fields (see Area 4 below) act as an important buffer zone between the park and the built-up areas east of the heavily trafficked Attleborough Road. Enclosure is less satisfactory on the western flank with flat roofed buildings standing close to the park boundary separated from the footpath by a steel palisade fence.

Coton Road

This is now a wide pedestrian-hostile dual carriageway road where the car dominates the environment. The central reservation and kerbs are railed with unsightly metal barriers towards the ring road which restricts pedestrian access and movement. Trees to Riversley Park mostly enclose the east side whilst on the west, the existing conservation area boundary has been drawn to include a series of good quality, mostly detached, 19th century houses (83). At its northern end adjacent to the Ring Road at the Coton Road roundabout junction is a short, much altered, late 19th century terrace with some unsightly inserted modern shop fronts, 18-22 Coton Road.

Negative Features

• The ring road severing surface level links• Adverse changes to Park features such as river

bridges and yje loss of the main entrance from 33

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Coton Road• 18 – 22 Coton Road• Riversley House• Car dominated environment along Ring Road and

Coton Road• Car parking areas

3.7 CHARACTER AREA 4: THE PARK

FRINGE Principal Features

• Large open green space of King Edward VI playing field with many mature trees of landscape importance around its perimeter.

• Attractive tree lined footpath known locally

as ‘ Lover’s Walk’ linking Attleborough Road to Riversley Park (84).

• Dempster Court designed by Frederick Gibberd again with important trees in landscaped areas (26).


A roughly rectangular block of flat land bounded by the ring-road to the northwest, Riversley Park to the southwest, Church Road and Attleborough Road to the north east, and the railway embankment to the southeast.

Uses

This is an area of mixed use comprising a large supermarket and associated car park, playing fields and housing.


The area was liable to flooding before 20th century improvements and there was therefore little built development here before the last century. It comprised of a large Victorian textile factory belonging to the Union Wool and Leather Company on the site of Sainsburys Supermarket, a large school playing field belonging to King Edward 6th School, and short row houses together with small hotel along the west side of Attleborough Road of the late19th century. The factory was built in 1864, and was demolished in the 1970s.

In 1908 Nuneaton Urban District Council purchased a strip of land that had formed part of the school playing field to create an entrance and promenade to the recently opened Riversley Park from Attleborough Road.

Following bombing of Church Street in 1941, Frederick Gibberd planned blocks of local authority housing opposite St Nicolas Church as part of his town centre design of 1947. This scheme of 76 flats, which is known as Dempster Court, had been constructed by January 1952 (26).


This character area possesses limited inherent townscape and architectural interest. Its value resides largely in its open green spaces that act as a green buffer between Riversley Park and Attleborough Road, together with the mature trees that such spaces allow.

Sainsburys supermarket is a large single-storey building of brick with ‘black and white’ panel

cladding and pitched roofs above, fronted by an extensive car park. The latter is accessed off the ring road. The building presents a long blank elevation to the footpath linking Riversley Park with Attleborough Road but is otherwise quite well tucked away amongst trees and shrubs and does not intrude.

Beyond Sainsburys to the east, overlooking Church Street and the large ring road roundabout, are the apartment blocks of Dempster Court. These are typically austere post-war brick and render L-shaped three storey flats with shallow pitched roofs. They form part of Gibberds vision for Nuneaton which included the library he designed over a decade facing them on the north side of the traffic island. The flats were clearly of a form height and orientation intended to form satisfactory visual enclosure to the large space occupied by the roundabout, and in this they have largely succeeded. They are of interest primarily as examples of the work of a major architectural figure and urban designer of the mid 20th century

To the south of these is the large former King Edward VI School playing field, bounded to the north east by Attleborough Road and to the south east by an embankment to the railway line. It is included in the area for its amenity value as a sizeable area of open green space providing an attractive tree lined approach to Riversley Park. The path known as Lovers Walk (marred in part by the rear service side of the supermarket) has an open aspect southwards offering middle distance towards the railway embankment and the southern end of the Park. The trees around its perimeter, including those along the path, make an important amenity contribution to the conservation area. The playing field also serves to distance Riversley Park from the noise and traffic along Attleborough Road to the west. At its eastern corner along the west side of Attleborough Road is the small row of houses and hotel previously mentioned. They are generally unremarkable with little to distinguish them from other housing of the same date outside the conservation area except for the prominent corner turret to the hotel (85).

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12 E. A. Veasey p3 and Paterson and Rowney 1985.

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3.8 CHARACTER AREA 5: THE CHURCH, VICARAGE, AND GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.

Principal Features

• Church and churchyard of St Nicholas• Former King Edward VI School• Old Grammar School• Former Vicarage• Mature trees and green spaces associated with

the church


This is a small area around the Church that includes its former vicarage and associated former Old Grammar School and its replacement, the King Edward VI College. It is located to the south east of the town beyond the ring road and the large Church Street traffic Island, and is bounded by Church Street the ring road and part of King Edward Street

Uses

Ecclesiastical, office and educational


Although a church was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, and no archaeological evidence of a pre-Norman building has been found, it has been suggested that a church existed on the site of the present building providing the focus for the pre-urban settlement of Eaton12.

The existing parish church of St Nicholas is large and its earliest parts date from the mid 14th century with major 15th century alterations including the raising of the roof with the addition of a clerestory. The building, particularly the chancel, was heavily restored in the mid 19th century by the architect Ewan Christian (86).

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The building stands within a sizable churchyard and close by is a big 17th century vicarage indicating wealth and importance of the parish in the medieval and post medieval periods (87). Also closely associated with the Church is the former Grammar school of 1716, a small building with a tower that was virtually rebuilt after having been badly damaged by bombing in 1941 (88).

The church was apparently left deliberately isolated by Gibberd ‘to be a dominant element’ on his loop road later to be the ring road so that ‘the scale of the group would not be destroyed by large scale development’ and to allow ‘greater freedom’ in the planning of his housing scheme opposite.

On the other side of the church from the Old School stands its replacement the former King Edward VI Grammar School of 1880, now the King Edward VI College


This church-related group stands divorced from the town and is to a large extent dominated by the ring road and the large Church Street traffic island (described by the famous architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner as a ‘wretched roundabout’) when approaching from the town centre. They are individual free standing buildings set within sizeable grounds containing many mature trees of townscape value that provide a complimentary green setting and welcome relief to the dense urban area within the ring road. The traffic island destroys any sense of continuity of Church Street as a street to either side of the ring road.

The tower of the church seen among trees is still a prominent feature of the local area in views from Church Street within the ring road despite recent large scale construction of the Law Courts nearby. The churchyard, its boundary walls, surviving monuments, and particularly mature trees make an important contribution to the amenity of Attleborough road within the conservation area, though its historic value and character has been steadily eroded over the last forty years

The vicarage is a 17th century brick building with a front of five shaped gables largely hidden from view behind a tall boundary brick walls along the ring road, the latter acting as a physical barrier to pedestrian access from the town.

The former grammar school which stands a little apart from the other buildings of the group is by Clapton Rolfe - an Arts and Crafts architect from Oxford. Its design shows the influences of the major Victorian architects of the High Victorian period - Street and Butterfield in its Gothic motifs and of Norman Shaw in the tile-hanging (89)13 Extensive 20th century additions have been made affecting the immediate setting of the former school including the crescent shaped addition in ‘modern’ style by Essex, Goodman and Suggitt of Birmingham14

Negative Features

• Busy ring road and traffic island cutting the area off from the town centre

• Poor setting to the character area to the north and west owing to the poor townscape within the ring road

• Erosion of the historic and amenity value of St Nicholas churchyard.

13 Pevsner p36614 Ibid

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PART 2 : FUTURE CARE

6.0 MANAGEMENT PROPOSALS

6.1 Introduction

An important aspect of the conservation area appraisal is to provide the basis for proposals for the future care and development of the heritage value of the town whilst giving due consideration to the constraints acting upon it and the resources likely to be available. The proposals should ‘take the form of a mid-long term strategy setting objectives for addressing the issues and recommendations for action arising from the appraisal and identifying any further or more detailed work needed for their implementation’.

In setting these objectives, which are largely focused on physical improvements to the urban fabric, the Council is keenly aware that non- physical factors are of equal importance for sustaining a high quality historic environment in the future. In particular, the Council is committed through its planning and economic development policies and initiatives, to supporting a healthy local economy and a prosperous and participative local community that will underpin the physical conservation objectives set out below. These wider matters are to be addressed in policies to be contained in the forthcoming planning Local Development Framework.

Work on the production of the Local

Development Framework is currently in progress. It is intended that both the appraisal and management proposals contained in this document will inform the core strategy and later SPD policies for the LDF. Public consultation on these proposals will be in accordance with the statement of community involvement so as to meet the requirements of the LDF and ensure they carry the appropriate weight in future planning decisions.

6.2 Suggested Conservation area boundary changes (91)

The following boundary changes are suggested:-

Boundary Revision 1 To include western section of frontages to Abbey Street and Queens Road

Reason : To include traditional building frontages of the late 19th and early 20th centuries including the Co-operative Society buildings.

Boundary Revision 2 Extension to include the north side of Newdegate Street.

Reason :To include the historic street plan and particularly the currently excluded sections of the original medieval market square.

Boundary Revision 3 Extension to include parts Church Street.

Reason To include part of the historic street plan and to include Debenhams buildings east of the river and the former Conservative Club

6.3 Management Proposals

Following on from the above, the draft proposals below have been formulated for the purposes of public consultation as part of this conservation area appraisal process:-

1. Where opportunities and resources arise, to seek to promote the sympathetic redevelopment of sites and areas identified in the detailed appraisal as detracting from the character or appearance of the area.

2. Develop area-specific development control based planning policies aimed at preserving and enhancing character and appearance of the conservation area.

These might include policies that; • require all development proposals to

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positively enhance the character and appearance of the conservation area rather than merely preserve it

• preserve and reinforce the various characteristics of the character areas identified in Section 5 of this appraisal

• place a strong presumption in favour of retention of all buildings identified in this appraisal as making a positive contribution to the conservation area (90).

• In proposals to alter these building there should be a strong presumption in favour of retention of original features and materials. Efforts should be made to reinstate important period details particularly windows where they have been lost.

• promote greater street activity in Abbey Street and Newdegate Street

These would need to be linked to the LDF via policies and guidance in the local development document to carry any weight in planning decisions.

3. Review tree planting within shopping streets with a view to possible removal of certain examples that appear too large or which are poorly sited in relation to buildings.

4. Review the design and materials used in the paving of pedestrianised streets throughout the town centre with a view to establishing a planned and coordinated programme of repaving in line with English Heritage guidance ‘Streets For All’

5. Pursue more rigorously enforcement action

against unauthorized development withion the conservation area particularly in relation to the removal and alteration of original period features especially windows to upper floors and changes of roof materials.

90The Contribution of Individual Buildings to the Special Interest of the Conservation Area

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