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Turn city's empty shops back into homes
As the Derby Evening Telegraph champions the regeneration of Derby’s old town following the opening of the Westfield centre, local historian Maxwell Craven suggests an alternative solution.
Our chairman wrote to the council asking what plans were in place to counter this outcome. We received a reply, basically denying that anything so drastic would happen.
We later wrote to the chief planning officer, asking about plans for alternative uses for two landmark buildings, Marks and Spencer’s in St Peter’s Street, designed by Robert Lutyens, son of the great Sir Edwin, and Debenhams in Victoria Street.
The answer was two-and-a-half pages of waffle.
Now all these predicted events have come to pass. A quick canter round the old part of the town yesterday threw up a total of 14 empty shops of all sizes, in Green Lane, East Street, St. Peter’s Street, Corn Market, Market Place, Sadler Gate, Victoria Street and The Wardwick.
What sort of impression this gives to visitors, heaven only knows. However, a very rare Richard Keene photograph has given me the ultimate answer: a reversion to residential use, where it is historically justified.
The picture is of the west end of The Wardwick. It was taken in 1893, the year before Keene’s death, for it shows a gas lamp standing on the near corner with Becket Street and one of the new, much taller, electric lamps introduced that year, on the opposite corner, in front of what is now the Wardwick Newsagents.
The tramlines, laid in September 1880, are still single track and unelectrified, a change which did not occur until June 1907. Another striking feature is that two buildings, between the house at the far right and the Lord Nelson (itself later rebuilt), had not then been erected.
In fact, gardens still bordered the road. These were once part of the two acres of pleasure grounds of the Jacobean House, seen dominating the left of the picture.
The insertion of Becket Street in 1855 had separated them from the house and eventually led to their “redevelopment”.
The edifice just visible on the extreme left is Mundy House, the late-17th-century townhouse of the Mundys of Shipley Hall. The three-storey building on the right with the (now lost) pedimented doorcase, is 51-55 Wardwick, which was also built by the Mundys, but in this case, those of Markeaton Hall.
It was designed by James Denstone, who also designed Markeaton Hall. Interestingly, the documents relating to its erection in 1768-1771 still exist in our excellent Local Studies Library, off Iron Gate, where I shall be delivering a lecture entitled, An Illustrated History of Derby, this Thursday at 7pm.
I have often wondered quite why Francis Noel Clarke Mundy built nos 51-55 for, with Markeaton Hall only a mile from the city centre, he would hardly have required a town house. Perhaps it was an investment property. By the time of the photograph, it and the garden beside it had become the property of Lord Scarsdale.
The building between nos 51-55 and Becket Street is also of considerable interest, being almost as old as the Jacobean House itself, as is revealed by another Keene photograph taken from the garden at the back before Atkey’s garage – now a nightclub – was built on it.
One can see the dormered roof, ancient timber mullion and transom cross windows, and thin bricks. A clue to its true age at the front is the considerable expanse of wall between the top of the first floor windows and the eaves. Once there had been a gabled attic. The end gable, too, with its coping and ball finials, is very 17th-century.
The real revelation of this view is that there are absolutely no shop fronts. Like St Mary’s Gate, Friar Gate, parts of Iron Gate and Full Street, The Wardwick had always been residential.
This photograph and the better-known view taken looking in the opposite direction would enable careful restorations of the ground-floor facades of these houses. And how dignified and delightful they do look without acres of plate glass, gawdy facades and brash signage!
A thriving residential community might just be one way of bringing back some life into the city’s older streets.
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County: Derbyshire
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