Designs never made it off the drawing boards
PICTURED here you see a number of grand designs that never made it off the drawing board. If they had transitioned from pencil and paper to bricks and mortar they would have changed the face of the county’s two main urban centres. But they didn’t.
Take a look at the design for a fountain in central Gloucester, which would have knocked Cheltenham’s Neptune fountain into a cocked hat had it materialised.
It was the work of architect William Burges, who took as his inspiration the legend of Sabrina.
We won’t go into the legend in detail here as it’s a drawn-out story. Suffice to say it involves kings, wizards, Welsh dragons and all manner of mythical machinations that end with a water nymph named Sabrina becoming the River Severn.
Burges did his best to incorporate the myth into an elaborate water gushing extravaganza, vast in scale. At the top
Gloucester’s heraldic arms were held aloft by an otter. Gargoyles in the shape of frogs and fish were dotted here and there.
Figures, real and imagined from the city’s past, peeked out from behind sturdy columns in various states of undress. And carved panels displayed sturgeons, sea serpents, lampreys and such fishy fare that might be found in the local river.
Burges’s fantasy was featured in The Builder magazine in 1858 and the reviewer wrote of it: “There is no reason why the good citizens of Gloucester should not add a beautiful and useful adjunct to their famed cathedral by executing the concept of Mr Burges in stone or marble.”
But the good citizens of Gloucester chose not to do so, probably on the grounds that they would have had to pay for it. And also that to make room for the fountain would have required demolishing a number of important civic buildings in the city centre.
Cost was also the reason why Cheltenham never got its purpose-built municipal offices, proposed designs for which you see here. In 1912 the corporation declared a competition, inviting local architects to submit designs for new municipal offices up to a budget of £10,000.
A site was set aside adjacent to the Winter Gardens and a prize of £100 was offered to the winning plan, with £50 for the runner-up. When the competition closing date arrived all eight of the entries were costed at more than £10,000. Consequently the corporation rejected the lot.
In the end the corporation bought a range of buildings in the Prom that have been the municipal offices ever since. But imagine how different the town centre would be if one of these monolithic structures now occupied most of Imperial Gardens.
In a similar competition, architects were asked to design a war memorial to stand in Cheltenham’s Promenade and one of the submissions you see here.
The Greek temple-like structure never appeared, again deemed to be too expensive.
Many will remember Gloucester’s two railway stations. The one built by the Great Western Railway (GWR) is still with us today, while the site of the Midland Railway’s station is now occupied by Asda. But the city almost had a third station.
In 1901 the GWR presented plans to build one at Chequers Bridge, the cost estimated at £30,000. The purpose of the station was to cut off the loop that required trains from Bristol to reverse at Gloucester before continuing up country.
The proposal was, however, eventually dropped when the GWR and city corporation couldn’t agree over who should pay for the access road to the proposed station.