Wide streets were start of relief road plan

As every amateur photographer, or even the professional ones, will recall, the old multi-storey was an amazing vantage point from which to take photos of the modernist city and, especially, the Whitefriars area.

I took the accompanying pictures in the mid-1980s and they show a very changed scene from the one we can see today.

What is immediately obvious from these views is the width of the streets.

Gravel Walk was designed as a dual carriageway and to be the first section of a road that forged its way through the centre of Canterbury.

It would eventually have merged with a widened Tower Way. Plans for the completion of this east-west relief road were dropped in the late 1960s.

Similarly, St George’s Lane was a dual carriageway throughout from 1962.

This was planned as a feeder road between the existing main thoroughfare through the city, and the planned relief road. Cancellation of the relief road rendered these vast areas of tarmac redundant and this was one of the factors in deciding to redevelop the Whitefriars area.

The bus station is shown to good advantage in both views.

This was a time when East Kent was operating as a newly privatised company and had not yet been absorbed into the monolithic Stagecoach organisation.

Also note the yellow minibuses, operating out of Gravel Walk on city services.

The Coach and Horses pub features in the first picture. Overall, it is hard to imagine the old layout when walking along Gravel walk today.

St George’s Lane and the bus station

Looking along Gravel Walk in the 1980s