Esher had an uneasy relationship with York Corporation. They made stringent conditions before his study was allowed. It should be limited to the area inside the city walls. (They favoured an inner ring road: most experts and the public were pressing for an outer ring.) One reason they later advanced for not accepting his report even in principle was that he had not considered the area outside the walls.) They had had, of course, notice of his work in progress, and a presentation of the report well before publication. The other three towns had accepted their reports much sooner. York Corporation remained obdurate.

Esher commented: "Strict development control from now on could prevent any further horrors from going up in the city while the long-tem job is being done. ...While we were working on the study the city sent us all planning applications for consideration. But that procedure came to an end the day the report was finished, and now development control is back on the old system, which failed to prevent some pretty bad buildings going up in the past. One or two decisions have already been taken which wholly conflict with my proposals. " He suggested the appointment of a director with responsibility for conservation. "Otherwise I see very disappointing results coming from the Government’s efforts to encourage conservation."

Architect's Journal Editorial YORK, THE CAR AND THE SHOPPING REVOLUTION

Last week Lord Esher's conservation study of York - or rather, the city within the walls - was at last published. It has been rightly acclaimed as the most detailed, sensitive and loving exploration of this wonderful historic city, including all its lamentable marks of decay and dereliction, and it presents a detailed, imaginative and down-to-earth programme for its future conservation.

Combining the rescue and restoration of historic streets -'gates' they call them in York - with their relief from traffic and with finding new uses for those parts already too far gone for restoration, Lord Esher has presented a plan not only for the city's conservation but also for its increased prosperity and the return of a sizable population to live within its walls.

It is a matter for regret, indeed, that the conservation area was confined within the walls, apparently at the urgent demand of the city council. But we hope that the results of conserving and recreating the walled city will be such as to make councillors who are now sceptical hasten to call for more conservation areas to be established. We believe that the rise in economic values resulting from Lord Esher's proposals for the inner city are bound to have this effect if they are carried out as planned. His proposals for the limitations on traffic-in particular the recreation of a minster precinct by closing the road and banning the car; the form and scale recommended for new buildings are quite admirable, as are the proposals for the recreation of parts of the city already too far gone in squalor for conservation to be possible.

Our only doubts regarding the wisdom of the report relate to allowing the area of shopping space to grow to 90000 sq ft (8361.27m²) in mainly large scale developments. York is an important regional shopping centre and this is a fact on which the Esher report bases its confidence in new prosperity for the conserved city centre. In a section of the report by Gerald Eve & Co the city's catchment for shopping is examined and its potential new space requirements estimated.

In fact, the report points out, supermarkets have already moved in with their usual brashness and large scale buildings and have penetrated nearer to the heart of the city than should ever have been permitted. And in the report's large scale map showing areas of proposed change it looks as if some more scale multiples are to be allowed nearer to the core than seems to us desirable: for example such developments are apparently to be permitted all the way from near the Castle, up Piccadilly and Parliament Street to Davygate and Samson Square - the edge of that area of ancient streets and alleyways is proposed largely to pedestrianise.

This worries us, not only because of the scale of the buildings but also because the demand for access to them must surely build up pressures against Lord Esher’s admirable plans for limiting access for the car into the walled city. Would it not have been wiser to confine these large new shops to the neighbourhood of the four multi-storey car parks near the walls that are proposed in ther report?

While realising that 'getting in 'Marks & Sparks' (who, by the way, are already represented in the walled city) is a key to holding the position of a town as the acknowledged shopping centre of a region, we whether, in the siting of some of 'shopping of the future', the report has not actually added to the difficulty there will unquestionably be in winning acceptance and the application in practice of the a proposed limitations on car and lorry access which are a key part of the conservation plan.

The Architects' Journal review of Esher's York: "It would not have been possible for the Royal Institute of British Architects to choose a more fitting meeting place for this year's conference than York. For it comes to this most splendid historic city at a moment in its history when its future has become the focus of concern and interest because of its selection by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as the subject of the first conservation study ever commissioned by a minister in this country, and the Esher report is today the subject of enthusiastic public discussion and anxiety in the city. Anxiety exists because, up to the date of going to press, no official pronouncement has yet been made by York City Council as to whether it accepts the recommendations of the report.

Worse: since publication of the report, the council has approved plans for developments within the conservation area which are directly contrary to the Esher report's recommend-ations, one of which, a housing development in Leadmill Lane, has now been rejected by the MOHLG because it is at variance with the Esher proposals. However, a 1959 vintage plan for widening St Andrewgate has now again been brought forward, although the Esher report recommended maintaining the road at its present width, with a building across the King's Square end giving access for vehicles to the square. Planning permission has also been given for a multistorey office block in Piccadilly [Ryedale House] and for a new chain store in Coney Street, replacing five small shops, despite the report's warning that 'its charm derives from the contrast between buildings of many periods and sizes and a general verticality (which) could be lost if its small units were to amalgamate into large frontages.

Such decisions, combined with continued refusal by the York Corporation to accept the Esher recommendations 'in principle', has led to an amount of protest from citizens of extraordinary vigour and breadth of support. An appeal to the town clerk signed by a number of distinguished Yorkshire citizens, headed by Lord Harewood and including the three vice-chancellors of Yorkshire universities, last month urged the council to 'give some public sign that it supports in principle the Esher proposals. Of the public enthusiasm in York there seems now to be no doubt. We suggest that the time has come when the corporation's support for the Esher proposals should be publicly and unequivocally stated. At the same time the Kings Manor Luncheon Group led by Professor Patrick Nuttgens and supported by Mrs Irene Faulkner, wife of last year's sheriff, is threatening to hold 'a top people's sit-in at the Mansion House', unless acceptance in principle is forthcoming, as it has at Bath, Chichester and Chester.

Visiting York with other members of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Maurice Barley declared, 'There isn't any question that York is much the most impressive, the most valuable and the most complete of the three provincial capitals of England. There. Is still a chance to keep it that way? This will depend first and foremost on York City Council.' He pointed out that if St Andrewgate were widened the next step would be that adjacent streets also would be widened, 'with perhaps a new hole in the city wall' [The Council planned main traffic routes via St.Andrewgate, Goodramgate and King's Square. The new hole was to be by the Merchant Taylor's Hall.]

We believe profoundly that the recommendations of the Esher report must be carried through and that to make a start towards that end is a matter of urgency: if York the first and perhaps the greatest of the four historic towns selected for special study-fails to respond to the lead of the ministry and the advice of its consultant the whole exercise must be written off as a bright propaganda idea of Richard Crossman's when Minister of Housing, and all hopes of making a serious start on conserving what is most beautiful and valuable in this country be abandoned as a romantic dream.

If the city council cannot rise to this splendid opportunity - but we very much hope that it will - we believe that the minister should intervene to ensure that the city receives the help it so clearly needs in highly skilled and dedicated staff and in financial backing which will enable Lord Esher's proposals to become reality. …

You won't burrow far, even within the historic centre, without playing hopscotch with a heavy flood of traffic, sometimes in quite unexpected places, or without coming up against evidence of slow decay or rapid destruction and the introduction of new commercial building of destructive size and vulgarity in the middle of historic streets of totally different quality and scale. [Detailed report of the proposals follows]

But there have been many minor improvements as suggested by Esher. Later councils resisted others: often sensibly, because Esher's team was better at small-scale works than large ones.