Impact and bulk ‘big issues’ for Silver Hill (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Impact and bulk ‘big issues’ for Silver Hill

8:15am Tuesday 3rd October 2006 in Silver Hill By Andrew Napier

CONTROVERSIAL plans to redevelop the historic heart of Winchester came under the spotlight at the annual meeting of an influential civic watchdog.

More than 100 people attended the City of Winchester Trust AGM at the Guildhall last Monday (Sept 25), where plans to regenerate Silver Hill, a five-acre site between The Broadway and Friarsgate, were discussed.

David Brock, from English Heritage, said the developer and city council's chosen architects, Allies and Morrison, were "by inclination modernists" and "believers in block architecture."

He said the revamp would be "a step-change" for the cathedral city, but added: "It is not such a Leviathan as some have presented. I think that comes from a particular view of Winchester I don't entirely agree with myself."

Mr Brock, guest speaker at the AGM, said Winchester was often viewed as a country town, when, in fact, it was a city. He considered the question was whether the high-density scheme, including six-storey blocks of shops, flats and car parking, was out of scale for a city - not a country town.

Mr Brock said a "big issue" was the bulk of the development and its impact on the cathedral and other buildings, as well as views from spots such as St Giles Hill. "This has been the subject of some controversy and rightly so."

He thought the area was already prominent, as buildings rose to a substantial height, but they would be bigger and English Heritage had asked the architect to make the skyline "gappier". However, the architects had been "loath to receive" their comment, he said.

The heritage chief supported the idea of extending the Roman road grid-style scheme to the rundown part of the city where it had never existed, but added the real question was whether it was right to build very large masses of buildings where for many years there were none at all.

He said the city council needed to be "more transparent", as "client and planning authority", about the need for more car parking in the city centre.

* Winchester City Council is due to consider the detailed planning application.