Introduction

Renewal cities were beholden to inward investment, particularly in the commercial sector. In the previous chapters we have read how central government spending on defence and education fed into construction; how networks connected various planning and architectural schemes, and how global events, like the Cold War, impacted on the local physical realities of Manchester. The story of Central Station brings us to another international context, that of decolonisation. Central Station was mooted for closure in 1965 and finally did so in 1968. The story of the proceeding decade and a series of unbuilt proposals for the station, demonstrates how local conditions were affected by post-colonial dealings, as well as by, the now familiar, political interplay between national and local government.

Mainstream modern architecture ran amok in the renewal cities. This form of modernism unashamedly adopted and adapted the international style to its own ends. Architects working at the commercial end of Britain’s booming 1960s inner-city development were influenced by first and second generation modernists, the study of whom was prevalent in British schools of architecture by the middle of the 1950s. The architecture of much large-scale, comprehensive development drew on manifold formal tropes in discombobulated, intellectually diluted assemblages. Developers were afforded new freedoms as levies were reduced and building licences abolished. In a development boom based ‘on institutional finance and individual talent’, speculative entrepreneurs made fortunes and their bottom line was frequently cost over quality. Amidst the landscape of the 1960s ‘boom cities’ one of the major tools available to local authorities to control development was the Comprehensive Development Area (CDA).¹ Local planning authorities also had control of the design of new road patterns.² In Manchester, as elsewhere, the CDA allocation was bound with highway planning. The use of CDA powers was firmly consolidated in the Town and Country Planning Act 1962 and their application was seen as able to ‘channel the buoyancy of private enterprise’ and to ‘stimulate economic as well as social change’.³ These converging private sector interests and public sector powers facilitated the large-scale investment and redevelopment in the renewal cities from the early 1960s through to the middle of the 1970s.

Comprehensive development

Reflecting on the situation in 1971, planner Nathaniel Lichfield pointed to the war and subsequent Town and Country Planning Acts as having influenced ideas of comprehensive planning and development.⁴ Under the Town and Country Planning Act 1944, local authorities were given the powers to designate land for comprehensive development, in the guise of the Declaratory Order. The designation and acquisition of sites did not always mean immediate demolition. Some land was purchased by councils to ensure that their long-term ambitions could be realised – many set in place in plans published between 1941 and 1952.⁵ Some types of reconstruction were contested; idealists wanted to grasp the opportunity for optimistic wholesale replanning and rebuilding in a modern fashion and saw the statute as a means of directing such.⁶ Others wanted certainty that bomb-damaged areas would take priority over blighted areas and be reconstructed much in the same image as before.

The 1944 Act sought to deal primarily with the comprehensive redevelopment of war damaged areas. Even though local authorities were given the power to use compulsory purchase for land assembly, decisions were still approved in Whitehall. Declaratory orders could be used to further expand sites, to enable comprehensive development – these too were subject to government approval.⁷ Such approval for war damaged sites led to the release of Exchequer grants towards reconstruction costs. Local authorities could also use CPOs for a wide variety of other purposes, including to combat ‘bad layout and obsolete development’.⁸ This, rather ambiguous phrase, encompassed ideas of reconstruction and renewal and effectively opened the use of powers to local interpretation as to what might constitute comprehensive redevelopment. In the context of 1960s planning, this inherent characteristic of the legislation is notable – national policy, even in the form of an Act of Parliament, can never be implemented without local interpretation. Even evidently statutory obligations are actually guidance. The combined devolution of powers and the evolution of new legislation created the conditions for the interplay of policy and proposals between local and central government departments.

Whilst the 1947 Act brought little in the way of alteration to the terms of designation, local planning authorities were granted full power to deliver their ambitions through the use of Development Plans. The Development Plan and CDA were designed to operate in a complementary fashion – Part I of the Explanatory Memorandum (1947) envisaged that Development Plans would allocate large swathes of towns as CDAs. Part II alluded to the utilisation of the CDA for slum clearance and ‘for other purposes defined in the plan’.⁹ The room for interpretation by local authorities presented many development options. Also instituted in 1947 was the role of the local planning authority as the body that would award permission for new development. The rules around the designation and assembly of CDAs were sufficiently relaxed for a local authority to achieve almost any purpose contained within an approved Development Plan. In principle this relaxation handed more powers to be administered locally, but it relied on a Development Plan that had been signed off by MHLG – something that Manchester did not have. The impact of this was twofold: first, very little planning work to develop a deliverable plan took place; second, only schemes that did not jeopardise the 1945 Plan were allowed to proceed. As such, the CDA tool was not used by the planning authority in Manchester until the 1960s.

Conditions to truly test development powers for local authorities only emerged during the 1950s. In Coventry, one of the towns at the vanguard of reconstruction, it was not until the Development Plan of 1951 that the first CDAs were identified.¹⁰ One reason for this delay in the use of powers by local authorities was due to the national political structures implemented to oversee development in the immediate post-war period. Post-war building licensing controlled development through regional committees until November 1954. The committees, under MoW chairmanship, were composed of representatives from the Ministries of Health, Labour and Supply, the Board of Trade and the MTCP.¹¹ They controlled the supply of labour and materials in the process of rebuilding. Resources were channelled towards schools, the health sector and new homes; redevelopment of central areas, whether residential or commercial property, was not a high priority. Ultimately, the cessation of strict licensing was one of the early catalysts for the upsurge in private sector development.¹²

City centres were fertile territory for young rapidly expanding property firms who injected fervour and commercially tinged professionalism into the act of developing. These companies, as well as being supported by state activities, were financed by the growing investment fund sector ‘who realised that real estate, bricks and mortar’ was a ‘good thing to get into’.¹³ A real term increase in wages created greater public spending power and retail environments were transformed to accommodate the consumer boom. The Conservative Government in particular put an emphasis on public–private partnerships in the renewal of town centres, but local Labour run councils contentedly adopted the model.¹⁴ This heightened activity, on the part of the private sector and encouraged by central government, did not meet with equal resources within local authorities that ‘faced with cumbersome procedures, financial limitations and inadequate staff, local planning authorities [were] unable to make much progress with comprehensive development’.¹⁵ This was certainly the case in Manchester which, according to Chief Planner John Millar, before restructuring, ‘had two architect planners available, one of whom was me, but there were no less than one hundred working for them [the private developers]. It was absurd.’¹⁶

The relationship between CDA powers, the role and status of the Development Plan, governmental interplay and local conditions is a complicated matrix of space, capital, will, expertise, material and policy. The story of the Central Station CDA in Manchester is one example of many similar developments. The networks of finance, policy, personnel and expertise involved in the unbuilt project were global, national and local and all influenced decision making around design.

Comprehensive Development Areas, advisory schemes, models and Manchester

For a brief period in the 1940s it was assumed that cities would undertake a significant amount of their own rebuilding. It is argued that this is one reason for the grand visions in many of the early post-war plans.¹⁷ From 1951 to 1974, in order to best serve the city and the citizen, the local authority architect-planner had to prepare a Development Plan with defined CDAs. The CDAs were supposed to simultaneously attract investment and protect the environment and amenity of public space. The skills of a Chief Planner and their team would affect the detail in the visual and spatial representation of their advice. In turn, the architectural schemes promoted by developers would respond to the proposed frameworks of the planning department (as well as the breadth of other influencing factors). Of course, all British architecture has had to respond to regulation of some form or another for most of the twentieth century.¹⁸ In 1951 the Development Plan was instituted and, by 1974, the Structure Plan was its universal replacement. The CDA, within the context of the development plan system, was a very particular planning tool and its effectiveness was dependent on skilful interpretation.

Following John Millar’s appointment in 1963 and the ensuing planning work, Manchester’s six CDAs were published in 1967.¹⁹ The development plan within which they were presented was approved by 1968. This was the first statutory document that could be used to control development in the central area of the city. The designation of the CDAs was the most far-reaching outcome in terms of the shape of the central city as much of its twenty-first century form was instituted in the words and images published in the 1960s. These were, however, explicitly ‘advisory plans’ and subject to discussion and amendment prior to development.²⁰ This type of outline guidance acknowledged the limits of the local authority and the lack of financial resources necessary to implement projects themselves. It was a reaction to the pressures exerted by the private sector and a need to provide some form of control that would protect the overall character of the city – developers would not wait to participate in a broad vision when there was money to be made in the now.

Figure 4.01 Rodwell House (Douglas Stephen & Partners, 1965). The base of the building straddles the Rochdale Canal, which runs beneath it.

The pace of development in 1960s Manchester was accelerated and several CDA allocations simply reflected deals already made between the local authority and the private sector, such as the dedication of the Market Street Area, which eventually became the Arndale Centre.²¹ A host of commercial developments including Piccadilly Plaza (Covell & Matthews, 1962–65), Portland Tower (Leach Rhodes Walker, 1963) and Rodwell House (Douglas Stephen & Partners, 1965) [Figure 4.01] had already begun to change the landscape of the city and it was the free market, rather than the local authority, that was shaping the streets. That isn’t to say that these developments were ignorant of the greater aims and ambitions of the corporation. Many proposals took account of the route of the proposed city centre road – several buildings drew their line or aspect from the unrealised scheme and ultimately became slightly incongruous in their setting.²²

Indicative of the pressures exerted by private developers, several of the advisory plans were reported in the architectural press before being formally published by the Planning Department. These included the Cathedral Area and the Civic Area [Figure 4.02], which were provisionally endorsed and received very little in the way of analytical critique.²³ Prior to the approval of the development plan, these types of advisory schemes were mostly reactive in their production, a fast way to wrest some control over a landscape subject to change and without a statutory framework. The particular skills of Millar’s department and their negotiation between national guidance and local concerns resulted in quite specific three-dimensional proposals for the central area and the CDAs especially. The department produced a series of advisory schemes and used drawings and models to illustrate their favoured approaches to particular sites. The advisory schemes were intended to act as outline frameworks for developers, but appeared quite authoritative, particularly when presented as a totality in a model of the entire city.

The architect-planners of the post-war era were equipped with design skills and produced diagrams, drawings and visualisations of their recommendations that could give the impression of definitive proposals. The skills of officers and the provision of outline planning advice also varied from city to city. Some cities, like Leicester under the direction of Konrad Smigielski, mirrored the level of production seen in Mancunian guidance, others stuck steadfastly to two-dimensional zoning and the basic package of statutory instruments.²⁴ Not all local authorities had personnel with the same skill set and guidance on the production of development plans left the level of formal definition in their hands. Not all cities had a planning department and some appointed consultants to prepare their plans.²⁵ In Manchester, Millar was a good communicator and he wrote and published on the work of his department. The Corporation also kept the public informed of evolving proposals and saw fit to put on display a model of the entire city centre, built by the planners, to enable citizens to view architectural proposals at an early stage.²⁶ The model was promoted as giving ‘an exciting visual dimension to the spate of official planning reports’ and seen as ‘much more than a table toy town’.²⁷

Figure 4.02 Illustrations by David Gosling of designs for the Civic Area. In the foreground of the upper image is the tower of the Town Hall. The building at the very top of the image is the Crown Court. A processional way would link the two civic buildings.

This, then, was the three-dimensional spatial representation of the planning department’s development ideals and an act informed by national guidance but shaped creatively using local knowledge and experience. The production of the reports, drawings and models is a formalisation of the interplay between Whitehall policy and local application. It is also representative of the steady handing of powers to local authorities to enact their own planning policy and approvals and the uncertainty and tension inherent in such a transition. The quality of development plans, for example, varied widely.

Manchester’s 1968 development plan was comprehensive. The Corporation published separate reports on car parking and the ring roads during the same period.²⁸ Read collectively these documents are more definitive than the proposals in the 1945 Plan. Millar recalls the road programme as a measure designed to secure ‘their’ (the Planning Departments) aims of conserving the historic core of the city and to create a more pleasant pedestrian environment by banishing cars to the edge of the centre.²⁹ This recollection is important in relation to Central Station; as will be seen, the historic train hall did not feature in all of the architectural schemes for the site. Understandably, the published reports did not reveal Millar’s personal love of Victorian railway heritage.³⁰ The apparent primacy of the road programme and all of the new development it both required and implied was at odds with Millar’s personal view. The architect-planners were not just decision makers working with exclusively quantitative data, they were aesthetes, with subjectivity; another chief planner may have cared less for history. A rise in regulatory systems and an increase in their dissemination meant that interested parties were able to acquire knowledge of the planning system and to judge the competencies of their public officers. The formation of the Civic Trust in 1957 highlighted some general and lay concern in the acts and the results of town planning.

As the general appreciation of historic buildings grew and coalesced with Millar’s personal ideal and his professional advice, the architecture of the schemes for Central Station would be directly affected. Alongside burgeoning public-sector planning activity, new social attitudes were being formed by non-governmental organisations that published their own advice and guidance concerning comprehensive development.³¹ Despite this broader public interest and the most determined efforts of the planners, it was inevitably national policy that shaped local decisions. The closure of the Central Station was in the hands of British Railways (BR) and the Minister of Transport.

Figure 4.03 Central Station looking rather forlorn in 1975 after its closure in 1968 and its use predominantly as a car park in the intervening years.

Central Station: closure to CDA status

Manchester Central Station was designed by architect Sir John Fowler and constructed for the Cheshire Lines Committee between 1875 and 1880.³² The Midland Railway used Central Station as the terminus for its services from London St Pancras. The trains would arrive in the magnificent train hall that is enclosed by a single span wrought iron truss structure, 64 m in width and 168 m in length [Figure 4.03]. Its height at the apex is 27 m. A significant portion of the arched roof was glazed and the building compared to the Continent’s finest stations of the same era. Its value was recognised in December 1963 when it was listed at Grade II*.³³

To the Corporation the site was important. It covered a huge swathe of central land and directly served the traditional civic and financial sectors of the city. Close to the site were the Free Trade Hall (Edward Walters, 1853–56), The Midland Hotel (Charles Trubshaw, 1903), the Oxford Road entertainment district. The recently published Rapid Transit Study had proposed a new underground station for nearby St Peter’s Square [Figure 4.04].³⁴ The site was also the effective terminus of traffic travelling along the M56–A56 corridor from affluent Cheshire and would become even more strategically prominent should all of the city’s highway ambitions be realised. The station’s demise, or more precisely its decay, would be there for all to see and would not the symbol or message that politicians wished to represent Manchester.³⁵

Figure 4.04 Proposal for new underground station at St Peter’s Square, part of the Picc–Vic project that was abandoned in the mid-1970s.

As a functioning station, Manchester Central fell victim to the British Transport Commission’s Modernisation Plan.³⁶ Only one passenger service to the station was to be cut on the advice of Dr Beeching.³⁷ John Millar, whilst asserting that there were ‘no firm plans’ for its reuse in 1965, acknowledged that ‘it would be an extremely fine building for an exhibition hall’.³⁸ The Corporation saw the need for an exhibition hall in the city and the revenue and business it could bring.³⁹ Other sites were under consideration but Central Station was thought preferable because of the architectural calibre of the existing building and the expense that would be incurred to realise a new building of the same quality.⁴⁰ It was suggested that the exhibition hall could be planned alongside the existing proposals for the entertainment centre in the Mosley Street CDA.⁴¹ Later the same year councillors added to the commentary, stating, ‘the site has untold possibilities. It is close to hotels and it is right on the spot as far as road development is concerned.’⁴²

While Millar publicly disputed the rigidity of any proposals, the report of 1964–65 from his department made clear reference to the possibilities of the site as an extension of the entertainment and leisure quarter proposed for the Mosley Street CDA that would connect the station site to the Piccadilly area of Manchester.⁴³ Suggestions as to the formal configuration of the scheme were even put forward; it was proposed that an upper-level pedestrian deck could connect the two CDAs. This type of proposed separation between vehicles and pedestrians had been around since the 1950s and was seen as a way to improve the amenity of the public realm.⁴⁴ Its wide adoption, at least in plans, was in large part due to the recommendations of national guidance prepared by Colin Buchanan and published as Traffic in Towns.⁴⁵ By the time the 1966–67 report of the planning department was published an advisory scheme had been prepared for the site that outlined the approximate area allocation of various components for a mixed-use development. A model was built suggesting the massing and positioning of formal elements that might be acceptable to the authority [Figure 4.05].⁴⁶

Figure 4.05 Model of the Advisory Scheme for the Central Station Comprehensive Development Area. The station hall is shown surrounded by pedestrian decks connecting to the rest of the city.

BR formally announced the closure of Central Station in September 1965.⁴⁷ However, the closure of the station was not a local decision, nor was it exclusively in the hands of BR or the train companies; it was subject to approval by the Minister of Transport, Barbara Castle, and a public inquiry.⁴⁸ Locally, the Town Planning Committee agreed that there was a case for the Corporation to acquire the Central Station site with a view to its use as an exhibition hall or car park.⁴⁹ Objections to the closure were heard in Manchester over a six-week period.⁵⁰ At the inquiry it was suggested that ‘the railways’ had ‘not taken into account the tremendous increase in road traffic that would come in the next five to ten years’.⁵¹ Ironically, the lack of a central ring road (still on the drawing board, yet intrinsic to the central planning of the city) posed as pivotal to servicing the developed site, was not seen as problematic. The combined predicted increase in car use and the additional traffic generated by railway closures was considered as a local issue and did not seem to affect national strategic planning.

The Minister was not forthcoming with her decision and during the rest of 1966 local lobbying and speculation over the future of the site continued. It was reported in December that, ‘any scheme for the station would have to fit with the comprehensive redevelopment of a district to which the corporation planning department attaches considerable importance’.⁵² Eventually, in August 1967, Barbara Castle approved the closure.⁵³ The following day a representative of BR said that ‘the railways would not necessarily put the site up for sale. They could lease it to a development group or develop it themselves.’⁵⁴ The site was not sold immediately and during the following few years several ideas and architectural schemes were prepared for the site.

The interest of private developers was sparked and, by October 1968, the Taylor Woodrow Group (TWG) published speculative proposals for the development of the site and its surroundings [Figure 4.06].⁵⁵ In the interim, figures released by the Corporation to the press suggested it would take approximately £11m to redevelop the entire site. The city’s blueprint, in the form of the advisory scheme, provided for the transformation of the main building into an exhibition hall, the provision of associated car parking and up to 600 city centre homes.⁵⁶ The TWG proposals largely mirrored the planning department guidelines and were presented in a short report with accompanying drawings.⁵⁷ The historic train hall was labelled as ‘exhibition and sports building’ – two of the clear uses that were part of the advisory scheme and suggested in earlier press reports. The rest of the site was shown as a mixture of office, residential, retail and public space. The most prominent feature of these early proposals was a cylindrical tower situated close to the drum form of the Central Reference Library (E. Vincent-Harris, 1930–34). Designed to house a hotel and conference centre, the drawing of the proposed section through the site shows the label ‘beacon’ applied to the tower. The accompanying text (presumably that of the architect) stated that ‘such a marker is valuable to draw attention to the site from the rest of the city cut off as it is by a rank of older buildings; to counterpoint the long barrow of the train hall; and to guide traffic from Princess Parkway into the parking terminal’.⁵⁸ Here was the idea of a sentinel to the city, designed to operate as a sign and a landmark, that would re-emerge in later proposals.

Figure 4.06 Taylor Woodrow Group sponsored proposals for Central Station, designed by BDP. These largely mimic the massing proposed in the Planning Department’s Advisory Scheme.

The Corporation, who required broad consensus to approve a plan as bold as this, still did not own the site. TWG’s aim, with BDP as their architects, was to convince the Corporation to appoint them as preferred partner if the local authority could make the acquisition.⁵⁹ Another site, at Belle Vue, was owned by the Corporation and also proposed for a new exhibition hall. The Development Committee was asked in July 1967 to make a decision as to which one it should back.⁶⁰ Perhaps unfortunately for the city, they chose to support the Central Station site, over which the authority actually exerted little or no control – the decisions to close the station and the disposal of it as an asset were firmly held by national organisations. Local press coverage reflected the apparent powerlessness of the situation from the city’s perspective.

Throughout 1967 stories appeared regularly enough in the local press to keep the issue in the minds of readers. An unusual joint Corporation-University working party investigated the possibility of the station’s use as an industrial museum and a student of architecture had his thesis project for an exhibition hall published as a ‘viable proposition’.⁶¹ In the following year it was reported that Manchester’s planning chiefs were discussing proposals with an unnamed London firm of architects and that BR were also poised to submit their own planning application for the redevelopment.⁶² Finally, in February 1971, the City Council gave the go ahead to commence negotiation with BR and the Minister for the Environment over the purchase of the site.⁶³ The £2m offer made by Manchester Corporation was rejected and the station was sold to an unnamed buyer for an undisclosed sum in June 1972.⁶⁴ The planning machinery of the CDA process likely had its own impact on the sale. Nearly ten years earlier, Franklin Medhurst, speaking in his role as director of the Civic Trust for the North West, suggested that local authority schemes were being jeopardised by their very publication. His argument centred on the fact that land values rose as speculators raced to secure sites in and around areas scheduled for comprehensive development.⁶⁵ This situation was certainly evident in the financial dealings around Central Station.

The CDA, however, was the best tool that Manchester planners had to control development. The setting out of central area of the city was not within the 1961 approval and, soon afterwards, Development Plans were being replaced as Wilson’s incoming Labour Government instituted change. In 1965, through the PAG, The Future of Development Plans was under discussion and the ‘Town Centre Map’ and ‘Action Area’ were to be implemented to replace the Development Plan and CDA.⁶⁶ Millar worked hard to negotiate a medium ground with Whitehall that enabled the onward work of his fledgling department, supported development in Manchester and met with the changing requirements of the planning system.⁶⁷ Their advisory schemes prevailed as the only real device with which to direct architects and developers. This was the officers of the Corporation utilising a selective part of the planning machinery to serve the interests of the city. Three-dimensional frameworks of this type, generated by local authority departments, were products of local action and interpretation in response to national policy. The nuanced situations of individual cities relied on the aptitude of personnel to work between the complicated legislative landscape. Each renewal city had its own actions, reactions and interplay within similar parameters – those orbiting Manchester’s Central Station were global, national and locally influenced.

The Crown Agents and English and Continental Property Company

The mystery surrounding the acquisition of Central Station in 1972 concealed a murky set of financial exchanges. The nature of these dealings ultimately led to the collapse of the development proposals but not before a lot of design work was done. In a complicated series of transactions involving businesses registered in the Channel Islands, conditional share capital acquisitions and holding companies, two developers, Ramon Greene and Jack Walker, saw the speculative opportunity in Central Station and how it could be manipulated to twice yield a profit – in its acquisition and in its development. The mystery buyer was later revealed as Arkle Holdings and it was funded by a post-colonial oddity of an organisation known as the Crown Agents (CA), formerly, and officially, the Crown Agents for the Colonies.⁶⁸

The CA were effectively civil servants but, because their work was for colonial governments, their appointments were made by royal prerogative and not by parliamentary authority. Constitutional lawyers described them as ‘an emanation of the Crown’.⁶⁹ Following the dissolution of most of the British Empire in the 1950s it was anticipated that the organisation would ‘wither away and eventually vanish’.⁷⁰ This view discounted the resilience of a large professional staff in dignified London headquarters and their appetite for survival. Their numbers did diminish but certain activities in procurement continued. One of the services the CA provided in colonial days was in the financial sector, raising loans and managing investment funds.⁷¹ It was this branch of the organisation and its expansion that ensured the continued existence of the CA. The indistinct hierarchical structure of the CA combined with their operating procedures, which was effectively a cooperative, eventually led to poor record keeping and a large-scale mismanagement of funds, though no personnel were ever charged with fraud. Their finance department was left to make decisions about tens of millions of pounds of investments with little or no consultation with the board.

Walker initially acted as a solicitor for the CA, but in one particular property venture he became projects director for Australia and soon developed other property interests with them.⁷² Through a series of insider dealings the CA had its own subsidiaries, secondary banks and a number of interests. Amongst these was Keepsake Homes Ltd, formed in 1969 by Walker, Henry Kaye and the Greene brothers, Ramon and Lionel (whom Walker had met in 1968) and funded by the CA.⁷³ In December 1969 Keepsake Homes Ltd became English and Continental Property Company (E&C) and, in a few exchanges, by 1971 the majority shareholders became Walker and Greene.⁷⁴ The CA agreed to provide up to £3m loan capital and the company was ‘vigorous from the start’.⁷⁵ ‘Comfort letters’, not legal agreements, as a form of guarantee, secured further loans. The status of the CA meant that they were not subject to much scrutiny or properly audited and it was mid-level personnel who distributed millions of pounds. E&C went on to raise further capital from the markets via their association with the CA, who were seen by speculators as a reliable guarantor of their investments. The exact amount loaned to E&C was unknown but was approximated to be at £38m at its peak in April 1973.⁷⁶ Financial relations between E&C and the CA were so interwoven that were the E&C to fail the CA could not jettison their subsidiary – they were actually obliged to underwrite their debt!⁷⁷

Earlier, in August 1971, questions were raised over the CA in the House of Lords.⁷⁸ This was the first time in any parliamentary context that the CA problem was posed and the Lords ‘appeared to be somewhat perplexed at the nature and accountability of the Crown Agents’.⁷⁹ The sale of Central Station was also eventually subject to parliamentary questions that brought to the fore issues of the relationships of nationalised industries and commercial development.⁸⁰ This was not the first time that E&C had been under scrutiny, but earlier investigations had largely concluded that, although there was some financial irregularity, the dealings of the CA were not illegal.⁸¹ Legalities aside, the funding of the purchase of Central Station by E&C and the fees for the professional services of the design team existed as a consequence of the shifting political scales of the Commonwealth. The distant impact of the financial dealings coalesced with the reshaping of the national railways and the local situation of Manchester’s planning mechanisms to inform its architecture.

English & Continental, Cruickshank & Seward and Central Square

Despite the various inquires, E&C’s activities remained buoyant and apparently unaffected by the questions raised at the highest levels. E&C officially acquired the Central Station site in January 1973 for a reported £3m.⁸² E&C extended an invitation to the local planning authority to attend its meetings as the proposals were developed towards a planning application. C&S headed the consultant design team. The partner in charge at C&S was John Seward and this project, known as Central Square, was without doubt the largest scheme he or C&S were commissioned to design. Had the proposals gone ahead it would have propelled C&S to international standing and undoubtedly been the catalyst for reordering their company structure.

John Sheard and Eamonn O’Neill were also heavily involved in the development for C&S and among the consultants was John Whalley of Derek Lovejoy Associates who went on to become President of the Landscape Institute.⁸³ Whalley and Sheard first met in the office of Frederick Gibberd at Harlow New Town some time around 1949/50 and had a long working relationship that included C&S buildings for ICL and Sun Microsystems at West Gorton [Figure 4.07].⁸⁴ The work of the C&S architectural design team was explorative and one that considered a number of options and possibilities for the site. Seward directed the programming and design of the scheme and his clients were open to his ideas.⁸⁵ The local spatial planning framework here interacted with the matured mainstream modern architecture of C&S, who had developed their language over nearly twenty years with Seward and Gibbon at the helm.

Surviving in archives are photographs of models produced by C&S in the period leading up to the outline planning application. The earliest model [Figure 4.08] was produced by C&S in-house model maker and perspective artist David Fricker, most likely to represent the drawings of an unnamed Dublin-based practice who were commissioned by Arkle Holdings prior to the transfer of ownership to E&C.⁸⁶ It is not uncommon for jobs to pass from one practice to another when a scheme moves from feasibility study to planning application. In all probability this first model was the starting point for discussions about how to further develop the design intent. This proposal was seen by C&S as addressing the main elements of the advisory scheme set out by the City in 1966 and the production of the model was a quick method for ascertaining the general massing of the scheme at an early stage.⁸⁷ The slab block of the tower bore resemblance to Rodwell House in Manchester Piccadilly [Figure 4.01] – the expressed structural columns outside of the floor plate could have been conceived to straddle the junction canal that ran beneath the station, in the same manner as the tower at Piccadilly. The model shows the complete removal of the historic train hall and a number of flanking building arrangements outside the main site. This was not aligned with the view of the planning authorities, one of whose aims was to ‘preserve Central Station’.⁸⁸ The proposed city centre road is clearly shown in the foreground of the image and presents a significant barrier to the connectivity of the scheme, overcome by some form of extended bridge link to Knott Mill (Deansgate) Station – shown bottom left.

Figure 4.07 Landscaped courtyard at ICL, West Gorton. Designed by John Whalley for Derek Lovejoy and Partners.

Initial models of C&S’s early proposals showed the partial retention of the train hall [Figures 4.09 and 4.10] albeit with the apparent removal of the flanking walls. Both schemes show significant plaza-type landscape arrangements. Here too was their first visualisation of cylindrical towers; one option showed them as dispersed and the other clustered, with the latter form reminiscent of the BMW Headquarters in Munich (Karl Schwanzer, 1972). Seward visited the Munich Olympics in 1972 and it is probable that this influenced the form and configuration of this element of the scheme.⁸⁹ Seward made reference to the idea of open space as stemming from the work of the City Planning Department. He argued, like BDP previously, that the curvilinear forms of their proposal responded to the arched structure of the train hall and that the cylindrical towers were in a formal dialogue with the drum of the Central Reference Library.⁹⁰ One of the sunken gardens appears similar in volume to the Library and could be described as its negative. The stepped profile of the clustered towers was intended to be visually dynamic and the exact truncation of the skyline would be determined at detailed design stage.⁹¹ Their curvilinear form, as well as being responsive to context, was intended to ‘set it apart from the anonymity of the lesser breed of slab sided modern office towers’.⁹²

Figure 4.08 Model 01. Preliminary model by Cruickshank & Seward. Thought to have been built by Dave Fricker to record a feasibility study by unknown architect.

Figure 4.09 Model 02. A group of cylindrical towers proposed at the corner of Deansgate and Peter Street. The station hall is shown as retained, but with significant intervention in the form of stepped floorplates.

Figure 4.10 Model 03. The clustered cylindrical towers are shown to the south-east corner of the site. The train hall is only partially retained and a new building inserted into its frame. In the middle ground are clear tubes, indicative of a proposed bridge link above the new ring road to Knott Mill Station.

An alternative to the cylindrical option was imagined as a narrow slab block [Figure 4.12] positioned towards the south-west of the site. In this option the train hall was fully retained, whereas in the preceding schemes a form of new architectural intervention seems to formally interact with a portion of the historic structure. The proposed linear block, shown in this option running parallel to Deansgate, was typical of other commercial architecture by C&S in its horizontal emphasis and setback upper level.

Figure 4.11 Perspective painting by Peter Sainsbury of proposal shown in Model 03 (Figure 4.10). This bold vision shows the partial retention of the structure of the historic train hall as a sort of fascinator for a new building colliding and cutting through it.

In a further option [Figure 4.13] other additions to the train hall were considered and rolls of masking tape were used to represent a conference centre! Both the slab and clustered cylinder options showed a high-level link to Knott Mill and each of the early proposals had landscaped areas. The most significant open space was represented in the slab option and includes a body of water. John Whalley referred to this as a ‘reflective pool’ and central to the landscape proposals [Figure 4.14], which were a ‘serious component’ of the scheme and not a ‘cosmetic’ gesture.⁹³ Also physically striking, and clearly visible in Figure 4.10, are the complex levels of the proposed city centre road and the various spurs imagined as necessary to provide vehicular access to the site. The preservation of the route of this ring road was still important to the City despite its having been on the drawing board, and without implementation, in one form or another since 1945.⁹⁴ This is demonstrable of the primacy of the motor vehicle in the mid-century and the perceived importance of this particular component of the city’s renewal (see Chapter 6).

Figure 4.12 Model 04. Slab form tower to north-west of site. Long linear block to Deansgate.

Model 06 [Figure 4.14] illustrated a consolidation of the scheme elements; the entirety of the train hall was retained without any additions that would compromise its form, the clustered cylinder tower was sited to the south-west and the public open space faced the city at the junction of Peter Street and Deansgate. The towers acted as a hinge between the strong geometries of the train hall and Deansgate itself. This succession of models testifies to the consideration of the overall formal composition. The influence of the train hall, the main thoroughfare, the proposed ring road and the civic core upon the organisation of the major elements is explicit throughout these three-dimensional studies. Deansgate is so inscribed in the grain of the city that it had to be addressed as an edge condition.⁹⁵

Figure 4.13 Model 05. A curvilinear response throughout this particular configuration.

The most malleable boundary was the existing approach from the northern end of the train hall towards the civic centre of the city. The concourse faced St Peter’s Square, flanked by the Central Reference Library, the Town Hall extension and the Town Hall. Each option presented took advantage of the aspect and topography of the north-eastern corner of the site. The situation of the clustered towers was seen as a sentinel for the city at what was considered a ‘gateway’ site. It was thought to complement the other towers in similar settings at other points in the city, namely the CIS Tower (G.S. Hay with John Burnet, Tait and Partners, 1961–62) to the north and the UMIST Maths Tower (C&S, 1968) to the south.⁹⁶ Visible in the next image [Figure 4.15] is a huge linear block stretching westwards towards St George’s, an area of Hulme, and a group of shorter tower blocks on the edge of Castlefield (Byrom Street).⁹⁷ Quite what powers E&C exerted over these sites is unclear, but the combined extents of the proposals were colossal and perhaps represent the ambition and gall of Greene and Walker.

Figure 4.14 Model 06. A more public-spirited response, retaining the train hall and creating a public park with a large body of water at its centre which may have involved excavating to the level of the canal that ran beneath the site.

Figure 4.15 Model 07. At the back of the model can be seen a linear block stretching out of the city centre towards St George’s, part of Hulme.

Jack Walker and Ramon Greene were larger than life characters and brought a cosmopolitan attitude to their dealings in Manchester. It was not unknown for them to arrive at the site by helicopter; Walker was a resident of Monaco and Greene resided in an apartment block called Shangri La in Monte Carlo!⁹⁸ In 1973 they commissioned a promotional film that showed aspirational images from footage taken in Toronto and Chicago of similar conference and exhibition centres. This type of pre-application lobbying was unheard of in Manchester and their perceptibly brash image may be one of the reasons why their initial personal approaches to the planning authorities in January 1974 were not particularly encouraging.⁹⁹ Nonetheless, the process continued and one model was taken to be critically reviewed by Sir Nicholas Pevsner.¹⁰⁰ A later model was presented to the Royal Fine Arts Commission at Carlton Gardens in November 1974.¹⁰¹ Despite Walker and Greene’s forthright approach, the design team appear to have worked tirelessly to satisfy all concerned parties and successfully negotiated the planning process.

C&S made an outline planning application on behalf of E&C in October 1974 for a comprehensive multi-use development. Reflecting on the process in 1979, John Millar noted that this application followed ‘a long series of discussions with the architects … and their clients Central Square (Manchester) Limited’.¹⁰² According to Millar, a substantial amount of work by all parties, agreed through ‘many meetings’, went into the proposals.¹⁰³ Millar was seen as ‘well informed’ and a ‘very effective city planner’ as well as having a ‘sharp mind’.¹⁰⁴ By the close of 1974, though, Millar was no longer Chief Planner for the city; he was now County Planner for the Greater Manchester Council (GMC) which was formally inaugurated on 1 April 1974 following the Local Government Act (1972). Nonetheless, his support of the proposals was important to their approval by the planning committee.

Millar and his successor to the city post, Brian Parnell, worked with each other and C&S as they developed their planning application. In order to reconcile any potential confusion over the respective aims of the newly formed county level governance and that of the city, the two authorities adopted the City Planning Department’s Advisory Scheme of 1966 as their shared framework for development control.¹⁰⁵ In this situation, we can read the CDA allocation, and the advisory scheme for its development, as national planning guidance interpreted by local government officers. Its use as a tool by which to negotiate mass and form with the architects was a development norm; however, the change of local and regional government structure added another tier to the political scale. The advisory scheme, in this context, turned from a piece of planning guidance to a type of contract between two arms of the state – a tool for development control became a mechanism for political consensus in spatial determination.

Figure 4.16 Illustrative sketch of the Advisory Scheme for Central Station.

Two applications were made, one for the development itself and another for Listed Building Consent, related to conversion works that would impact on the Grade II* listed former train hall.¹⁰⁶ E&C also owned a significant portion of adjoining land that did not form part of the application. The proposals conformed generally to the planning department objectives of the City Centre Map and the advisory scheme [Figure 4.16].¹⁰⁷ About five of the twenty-three acres was still designated for the route of the inner relief (ring) road. The rest was proposed as a mixture of commercial, leisure and residential uses. The E&C-sponsored scheme by C&S was scheduled to contain a trade centre, exhibition hall, offices, hotel, housing, shopping and leisure facilities, open landscaped space and mandatory car parking. The application was the subject of a joint meeting of the City and County Planning Committees in February 1975, at which support for the scheme was expressed.¹⁰⁸ The Planning Application was approved on 30 April 1975.¹⁰⁹ Only twenty-two conditions were placed on the approved scheme, none of which were particularly onerous or unanticipated. Some suggested conditions from the consultation process were not adopted, including the demand for a bridge link across Deansgate at an alignment to be determined by the local authority.¹¹⁰ This implied a favourable view towards the developers on the part of the authority, a view underpinned by the preceding reports and minutes prepared at city and county level.

Manchester, in the mid-1970s, was in the depths of deindustrialisation; its docks were in decline and the city centre subject to depopulation.¹¹¹ In many respects the authorities were bound to accept the views of E&C as, without them, the site, which was already deteriorating and viewed as something of an eyesore, would simply not be developed. A county sub-committee provided support from a regional perspective and John Millar in his role as County Planning Officer was well aware of the site’s capacity and possibilities. It was under his stewardship that the City Planning Department first prepared the advisory scheme for Central Station and mooted the idea of a ‘Tivoli Gardens’ type environment.¹¹² Ian Nairn writing in 1968 about the original advisory scheme recorded, in typically double-edged prose, that ‘Central Station is suggested as an exhibition hall surrounded by a kind of Tivoli – not as unrealistic as it sounds, for Manchester is desperately short of both open space and fun-places.’¹¹³

John Seward penned his own statement to accompany the outline planning application that was eventually approved [Figure 4.17] and his words were measured and diplomatic. Speaking of developers in general, but perhaps making specific allusion to his client he referred to their ‘tarnished image’ and that this can only be countered if the ‘quality of thought takes account of all of the essentials that … will make a material contribution to the way of life of the City both in and around its immediate location’.¹¹⁴ He is referring to the role of the architect as polymath, in this case as social engineer, and the mediation of place, policy and personnel in service of a design solution. Seward acknowledged the planning department on the first page of his design statement:

Figure 4.17 Approved outline planning scheme.

To propose what amounts to an open-space landscape design framework for the renewal of further areas of the centre, C&S were in very close dialogue with the planning department. As we have seen, Millar and his team were proficient urban designers and their influence on the proposals, whilst not explicit in the acknowledgement or accredited authorship, was implicit in statements like that above and has a formal genealogy. The earliest sketches and models always retained the train hall; they also contained strong vertical counterpoints to the horizontal barrel form. The vertical organisation and creation of a new city datum for an urban park, as presented by C&S, was a primary aim of the city. The personal influence of Millar in the language used by Seward in relation to heritage and the celebration of the industrial past is not certain, but may be assumed.

By 1975 conservation architecture was well established and the juxtaposition of old and new artefacts and materials became a common approach to architectural continuity. The sense of architectural and cultural heritage in the scheme was not overt in the models, but was expressed clearly in Seward’s text in relation to overarching character, spatial elements and material finishes. The use of existing materials and characterful spaces were described as ‘incidents and moments … that can be built into new forms and which will give a sense of continuity, character and consistency’.¹¹⁶ Specifically mentioned was the exposition of a ‘three level interchange hoist between canal, road and rail’. He cleverly couched the programme itself as derivative of the very nature of historic activities of trade in the city and tapped into the prevailing zeitgeist of post-industrial Manchester as a place for business to be conducted. Finally, he rounded off his informed disquisition with the following: ‘the real truth is that a quality of thinking and imagination will yield a profit for the whole community – this can only come from an understanding of the real needs of all concerned. It can only be said that a great effort has been made by many people to achieve that objective before all else.’¹¹⁷ In this prose, the regional experience of the architect and their sensitivity to local concerns came to the fore. The formal language of the architecture proposed was undoubtedly international in its style, but John Seward managed to place this firmly and convincingly within a regional dialogue. The global nature of the financing and procurement of the site was ultimately anchored to a local setting by not only the words, but also by the actions, of the design team. The mainstream modern architecture proposed was sufficiently flexible (or could be described as such) in its form and material to satisfy an array of parties with different interests in the site – its principal arrangement was influenced by the existing listed buildings and the approach first outlined by the planning department; the major formal elements were said to respond to the wider city context and tie in to the proposed highway arrangement; and the amount of lettable floor space made the scheme financially viable to the developer. The metaphorical space between tiers of policy informed governance and detailed architectural proposal required knowledge, experience and skill to negotiate a universally agreeable outcome.

Unfortunately, the prevailing economic climate was not favourable to development and the shortcomings of the Crown Agents were beginning to catch up with E&C. Despite the outline approval, C&S never received instruction to proceed with detailed design, though the process of marketing portions of the site for acquisition by third parties had begun.¹¹⁸ Walker and Greene effectively ‘vanished’ from any communication with the design team and other representatives of E&C continued to loosely manage the situation from a distance.¹¹⁹

City and county take control

Despite continuing parliamentary interests in the financial dealings of E&C, they remained owners of the site and continued to express a desire to develop some or all of it. Early in 1977 John Seward of C&S and a representative of E&C held talks with the City in light of the demise of the existing exhibition centre at Belle Vue in 1976. Their discussions centred on a reduced scheme that would see the creation of a new exhibition facility.¹²⁰ E&C were not prepared to relinquish any of their interests at this point due to the initial capital outlay and the ‘high redevelopment value if it could be realised’.¹²¹ Contrary to the messages relayed to the authorities, E&C’s interest was not in developing the site, but in disposing of it. They sold it in October 1977 to George Robinson (Manchester) Limited, a company specialising in demolition work.¹²²

After a sustained period of inactivity, the whole area around the station became of concern to the GMC and in 1977, together with the City, they began to reinvestigate the site and those adjacent to it. The commercial demands in the city were vastly altered from those of the late 1960s and the GMC urged ‘a more flexible approach … that [was] not completely dependent upon a single comprehensive scheme.’¹²³ The City convened a Special Committee to consider the purchase of the site. On the recommendations of said committee the City Council decided to promote a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) under powers granted by the Community Land Act (1975).¹²⁴ This was just the lever required to facilitate discussions with George Robinson concerning the acquisition of the site by agreement rather than by use of a legal instrument.

GMC acquired the site in the summer of 1978 and quickly appointed Shankland Cox as planning consultants to make a formal reappraisal of the site and its possibilities. The assessment led to the creation of a Joint Venture Study Group and proposals to develop the train hall as a convention centre designed by favoured architects of the GMC, Essex Goodman Suggitt (EGS) rapidly evolved.¹²⁵ EGS’s scheme also addressed the site of the Great Northern Warehouse [Figure 4.19], but ultimately funding was only available to construct the exhibition centre, which was named G-Mex, between 1982 and 1986. Following the IRA bomb of 1996 in Manchester, the city underwent a massive process of rebuilding and the remainder of the site that fell within the original CDA boundary was developed to include the Great Northern Warehouse, the Beetham Tower, a conference centre, residential accommodation and the Peter Street frontage to include a new public square, all at a disposition, scale and mass reminiscent of the Advisory Scheme of 1967 and the approved outline planning application of 1975. It is therefore possible to view the legacy of the CDA allocation in the shape and form of the city more than fifty years from its designation.

Figure 4.18 Essex Goodman Suggitt proposals for the Great Northern Warehouse.

International endings

Although C&S’s huge scheme was never realised, the case of Manchester’s Central Station shows very clearly how an international context, like that of decolonisation, can impact on regional and local concerns. It is interesting to note the tiers of discourse surrounding the development of the station. At one level there was a predominantly local or regional thread, which involved councillors, MPs and public bodies, whose voices, whilst looming loud in the local press, were largely without power or influence in the real negotiations. The second tier was internationally tinged; the CA were a former colonial body and provided funding, E&C had property interests across the globe including Australia and Singapore, Jack Walker was a resident of Monaco, John Whalley, the landscape architect, had studied at postgraduate level in Pennsylvania and the major new element of C&S’s proposals was informed by European precedent.¹²⁶ Yet, it was the magnitude of the site and its situation in Manchester around which all of these forces coalesced to arrive at a formal architectural conclusion and the local knowledge of the design team, headed by C&S, that drove the scheme to its fruition, at least on the drawing board, and, ultimately, with approval success at the outline planning stage.

The narration of its turbulent procurement, yet inactive development, has highlighted the statutory frameworks of the Town and Country Planning Act and the planning machinery applied to enable development. In this example, as with many in other renewal cities, the statutory powers of government were interwoven with private sector finance. In terms of actual rebuilding, the delays to the post-war reconstruction of central Manchester were down to limited resources, a focus on housing, health and education buildings and the control exerted by central government on the construction of these building types and rationing of materials. Therefore, even though CDAs were part of the planning machinery from 1947, their application in development control was relatively slow – CDA powers were not really required in the central areas of renewal cities until the late 1950s and, more predominantly, into the 1960s.

Where CDAs were used as a planning tool in Manchester it was for two major purposes: CDAs were primarily used to assist the public sector in negotiations with private developers in the parcelling of sites with fragmented ownership. Robert Maund (Assistant City Planning Officer, 1963–74) referred to the advisory schemes as being used to ‘fire the imagination’ of developers and that the planners were ‘happy to look at other options’.¹²⁷ It was a process of ‘negotiation’ and if negotiations were favourable then the authority would be willing to exercise their powers in support of the aims of the private sector. This corroborates arguments in relation to the entrepreneurial status of Labour authorities in the mid-century and the consensus of successive central administrations towards renewal.¹²⁸ CDAs were, in addition, used as a mechanism to protect the long-term interests of local authorities – as in the case of Central Station and the Education Precinct in Manchester.¹²⁹ The architects’ role in this scenario was often as mediator first and as designer second. The architects acted as conduits to the approvals of local authorities and other concerned parties. Architects’ local experience, particularly during the period under examination, was clearly important prior to the widespread international exchange of professional services. The CDA allocation in Manchester did not jeopardise reconstruction on smaller island sites and the comprehensive planning of the CDAs and the ring road effectively released certain locations for development.

The story of Central Station shows the agency of political tiers and at different scales; it shows the impact of political networks in the production of urban design, architecture and detailed specification. Larger factors came into play to prevent C&S realising their ambitious designs and it is ironic that the site was eventually developed by the newly formed GMC after fourteen years and the original unsuccessful bids of the City in 1968. Perhaps also tinged with irony is the fact that the GMC itself was dissolved in 1986, within months of completion of the G-Mex Centre, its most significant physical development. In this chapter we have seen the effects, impacts and ramifications of the networks of actors on an unbuilt central area scheme. In the next chapter I explore the development of another CDA in central Manchester, which was built – Market Place.