Buildings in city centre given £2.1m clean-up

SOME of Plymouth’s best known buildings have been given a £2.1 million clean-up to refresh the city centre’s post-war architecture.

- LORNA HUGHES

The city was one of the country’s most heavily bombed cities during the Second World War. Plymouth’s civic heart was virtually razed to the ground during the conflict, with 59 separate attacks between July 6, 1940 and April 30, 1944. Air raid sirens sounded 602 times.

Two shopping centres, two guildhalls, a theatre, six hotels and eight cinemas were destroyed, 26 schools bombed, 41 churches struck and 1,900 public houses destroyed by bombs or fire. A total of 3,754 homes were destroyed and 18,389 seriously damaged. The human cost was also devastating, with 1,174 civilians killed and 4,448 injured.

Instead of rebuilding, in 1943 the council appointed a leading town planner, Patrick Abercrombie, to create ‘The Plan for Plymouth’. It proposed replacing an overcrowded and congested city centre with a bold, modern style of wide streets, landscaping and greenery – all with a uniformity of architectural style and material.

It was the only large-scale example of post-war town planning to be fully implemented in the country. Now, some 80 years later, a four-year High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) programme aimed at revitalising buildings and spaces in the city centre, known as the Abercrombie Estate, has been completed.