The Civic Centre

ow we're looking north-east at the same model from the region of Warwick Road, and here we see the council's plans for a Civic Centre to be laid out between the intersection of the proposed new routes for New Union Street and Little Park Street which here runs slightly to one side of the original street which still remains. They refer to this style as a "University Campus" and in the background can be seen the Council House.

Once again, few, if any of these ideas came into fruition. On the far side of Little Park Street is now the Police Station, although it's not clear if this is being portrayed in the model. The rest of this 1945 model attempted to show a slick layout of council buildings, if rather unadventurous in design. However, this never materialised and we now have a haphazard mixture of old and new which is exactly the "incoherant unplanned mess" that they were attempting to rectify from the pre-war layout.

Moving around to view our "new town" from farther south west, we can see more clearly the original proposals for the area around the market. We're now seeing the model shown in "A Model Town!" from the reverse angle.
None of this appears to have ever come to fruition. To the left of Christ Church spire, Hertford Street and Warwick Lane don't seem to have been included in these war-time plans.... fortunately for us, they're still here today, rather than this rather austere, blocky layout that might have been forced upon us.

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