A Green and Civic Space…

Esher's Castle Sector was much larger than the area around the Castle, which he called the Precinct. The Castle Sector was the largest of Esher's city centre areas, extending from Ouse Bridge via Coppergate and Pavement to the N side of Fossgate, and including Piccadilly to the Foss. Piccadilly S of the Foss was in his Walmgate Sector, but is included here.

Piccadilly was cut through as a wide street to Pavement in 1912 to bring traffic into the central area. It was, in the 1960s, the heart of the local motor trade, with seven garages. Esher plainly felt constrained:

"…this notorious example of 20^th century non-architecture, and limitations must be accepted on our powers to do anything about it…The fronts to Piccadilly are bad enough; the backs onto the Foss are worse, and their grim influence spreads across the water to the Castle itself. One vacant site remains, and it is proposed that this should be used for a group of offices of good quality, designed to reduce the isolation of United House, to break the skyline into smaller elements, and above all to set a new standard in the strip between Piccadilly and the Foss which in the fullness of time may be emulated in the sites on either side."

Esher's proposal for dealing with Piccadilly south of the Foss was to 'block the dull view from Parliament Street' with multi-storey parking for 1,160 cars 'carried boldly across the street to Merchantgate, where is would be stepped down in sympathy with the small old buildings in Merchantgate and Walmgate'.

The Castle Precinct suggestions show similar constraints. Here garages and car showrooms adjacent to the Tower are passed over without comment The 1948 plan's civic ensemble has gone; though plans to demolish Peckitt Street had recently been revived. Esher gives a firm defence of the little area, and suggests removing the manufacturing industry from its centre.

For the Castle Precinct around the Eye of York, Esher suggests making a focus point for the C18 group by putting the obelisk from the Tower Street roundabout at its geometrical centre, e.g. off-centre on the Eye. Around Clifford's Tower is a scattering of trees, "to bring the greenery of Tower Gardens across", via planting of the central road reservations. For the whole perimeter, Esher suggested the services of a landscape architect. And for the northern part…

"Unfortunately, there is no specific brief for the planning of the vacant area between Clifford's Tower and the bank of the Foss. But in the context of what exists architecturally, some simple planning objectives present themselves.

1 To wall in the Precinct on the north side, to shut out the wide, shabby and shapeless landscape which permeates from across the Foss. [An actual wall could have accomplished this, but Esher is probably being metaphorical.]

2. To give the Castle Museum area just sufficient enclosure to make the group of buildings dominate the space about which they stand. [Esher deplored the shapeless vista of the car park, which then was not end stopped by the Coppergate shopping development.]

3. To create focal points from which the spaces inter-relate but contain themselves and the significant buildings. [Esher's favourite principle, sometimes to be achieved by building a new feature, applied like a photographer's matte, and here with dubious benefit.]

Esher therefore shows a building on the 1938 site and comments "the assumption has been made that a large meeting hall will be part of the future development". {The Arts Centre? The Concert Hall?] "Behind the Main Hall a terrace is shown to the Foss, from which springs the foot-bridge by which visitors enter the Castle Precinct from the multi-storey car park on Merchantgate." The building has a courtyard at its northern end, completed by a new block behind Monument 47 [the Café Andros.] This block is narrow, because St.George's Hall is retained. So is a large cinema behind it which faced onto Piccadilly. [Both were demolished for the Coppergate Development