Hidden tenements replaced by checkouts

Right up until the late 1930s, there could still be found tiny tenements crowded in squares, narrow streets or passages. These would often be found with almost invisible access points, usually a single arch leading into a dark passage, off larger thoroughfares. Many of these were in

the very heart of old Canterbury.

One such development was the 18th century houses of Rose Square, just off Rose Lane, and close to the main shopping area of St George’s Street.

The first of the above pictures shows a very dilapidated Rose Square in the early 1930s, shortly after some of the cottages, just off left, had been demolished to make way for a narrow rear entrance to the new Marks and Spencer store facing St. George’s Street. As it turned out, the rest of Rose Square wouldn’t last much longer and be pulled down, by 1939, allowing the store to enlarge the rear of its premises and also provide for an unloading yard.

In the early 1970s, and as part of the first Whitefriars’ Shopping Scheme, a further large, rear extension to Marks and Spencer covered the entire area once occupied by the houses of Rose Square. The second picture, from 1997, marks the precise spot of the lost houses.

In the second Whitefriars development plan, the early 1970s Marks and Spencer extension was the only part of the first shopping scheme to be retained. In fact, the store was further extended across to a realigned Gravel Walk and a newly created Rose Square. The latter is not quite on the site of the old one and had no residential element.

Rose Square in the early 1930s and, right, the exact spot in 1997 now replaced by the Marks and Spencer food hall and checkouts