ABSTRACT
The princess in question was our present Queen, who unveiled a plaque on the site in 1949 to mark the start of rebuilding work after the war. In 1942 the RAF had bombed the historic German city of Lübeck and Hitler, in retaliation, launched the Baedecker Blitz. Named after a German touring guide of England, the raids targeted historic cities across the UK. Exeter was hit on 23 and 25 April and 37 acres of its centre was damaged and destroyed. Tragic as this was, there were those within the town who also saw an opportunity to sort out the woefully dated fabric of the city. C.J. Newman, the town clerk at the time, was accused of demolishing far more buildings than was strictly necessary in the aftermath of the Blitz. The city fathers wasted little time in appointing a proper town planner to draw up plans for reconstruction. Thomas Sharp was a past President of the RTPI and author of the bestselling nine-penny book Town Planning published in 1940 (which had sold 250,000 copies!). He set about creating a modern town plan of bypasses and shopping precincts, much of which was never realised. However his great contribution was to propose a new street, to be called Princesshay running parallel to the high street and focusing on the axis of the cathedral tower. The result was the country’s first pedestrianised shopping street and was widely publicised at the time. Indeed, Sharp published his plans in his book Exeter Phoenix by the Architectural Press. There is a debate in the cities that were redeveloped after the war about the environments created. Increasing, the quality of the architecture is recognised and there are those, for example in Coventry, who argue for preservation. However, much of the architecture and all of the urban planning has not aged well and in Exeter redevelopment was seen as the only option. A retail redevelopment was promoted by Land Securities, who owned the site together with the Crown Estate. The plan by Chapman Taylor retains Princesshay partly as an arcade (left) and partly open to the elements (main drawing). The scheme includes 530,000 square feet of retail space with 60 stores and attracts 9.5 million people annually. A second phase includes a John Lewis store, and the overall effect has been to transform Exeter’s retail ranking. But is it a real place? There was controversy soon after it opened when it was revealed that the centre was employing mobile device tracking technology, plotting the movements of customers via their mobile phones. The ‘streets’ are private spaces, patrolled by security guards and CCTV and occupied exclusively by national retail chains. This is certainly a very good shopping centre – whether it is a very good piece of urbanism is a moot point.
