Last Days of Anglia Square
Few English cities rival Norwich for character and the preservation of historic architecture. East anglia's capital is known for its impressive array of surviving structures from the Middle Ages such as Norwich Castle and the Romanesque Cathedral. Lesser known however, are Norwich's more recent though no-less endearing collection of brutalist architecture. As a student in 2019, it was the latter which stood out to me. I moved to Norwich in 2019, onto the University of East Anglia's Lasdun-built, concrete sculpture-garden of a campus and was immediately fond of the devisive and distinctive look of the buildings there. I soon discovered more brutalism in Norwich such as the Hellesdon School and Anglia Square, the latter being the focus of this work.
Anglia Square was built in the late 1960s and included Sovereign House, HQ of Her Majesty's Stationary Office, and Anglia Square Shops: a pedestrian shopping plaza. The closure of Sovereign House and the relatively low income of the surrounding area plunged Anglia Square into a slow process of decay in the 1990s. Recession in 2008 stymied redevelopment plans. Business exodus and vandalism followed and continues to pervail.
Today, only the shops on the square operate. Sovereign House, the Cinema and multi-story carpark lie derelict and empty. A handful of charity shops, cafes, and budget supermarkets remain on the square. New developers Weston Home have pledged to transform the land into a modern-living hub fit for 1,100 residents with 86,111 sqft of business space. The project will include the total demolition of existing Anglia Square buildings and will thus result in Anglia Square's distinctive brutalist character being lost to time.
My photographs below document Anglia Square and Sovereign House in their final year before demolition. They have dominated the skyline of central Norwich for fifty years and are soon to become architectural history lost. I wanted to make a visual record of the site in its last days. The following is a eulogy for Anglia Square as a peice of architectual and philosophical heritage in Britian.
Anglia Square's origins lie in the 1940s. The area was heavily bombed in WWII, part of the Baedecker Raids; a series of Luftwaffe bombing campaigns against English towns with historical and cultural significance. The resulting structural damage to Magdlen Street catalysed planning interest which would eventually produce Anglia Square and Sovereign House. Thanks to the scars of WWII, the land formerely home to a melange of Medievil churches, Victorian factories and an early-century cinema was put forward for post-war development.
In the 1970s, Norwich began to transform. Despite the city's historic standing as a place of antiquity, a number of futuristic development projects took place in the late 60s-early 70s. Anglia Square was part of this wave. Other developments included a new flyover which biscected Magdlen St, one of Norwich's oldest throughfares, in a symbolic cross of old and new.
Describing the arrival of Anglia Square and summarising Norwich's general aesthetic shift in the post-war decades, Mark Carver says "Anglia Square arrived like a spaceship from another dimension. Its futuristic brutalism authenticated the quaint medieval city it landed on: for certain misfits and subcultures, at least, who reflected its awkward angles."
I briefly touched on Norwich's connection to brutalism before for good reason. There is a strong case to name Norwich as brutalism's spiritual home- at the very least the original spring of British brutalism. Hunstanton School on the city's outer limits was completed in 1954 and is seen by many architectural critics as the earliest example of our country's earliest example of modern brutalism. One such critic, Reyner Banham, who was born in Norfolk, is widely perceieved as the individual who brought the term into widespread, mainstream conciousness, thanks to his 1966 book The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? Thus, Anglia Square and Sovereign House joined the Hunstanton School, University of East Anglia campus and Ber Street's Skipper House in Norwich's mid century explorations in concrete form and functionality.
2024: From Futuristic to Forgotten
Anglia Square has a storied history of proposal misfires and curtailed investment plans. For example, in 1988 a grand was atrium proposed for the center of the shopping square. The proposed 'orange house' would have had two stories with restaurants, shops and even two high speed lifts. Evidently, this plan never came to fruition. In 1991 a large glass canopy was built in the center of the square, a consolation perhaphs...
Even original Anglia Square blueprints from the 1960s promised more than what shoppers eventually received. The architects originally planned to include extra shops, walkways and an extension to the western wing of Sovereign House.
In 2008 developers Centenary Ashcroft put forward large plans for the rejuvination of the site. Permission was gained to demolish certain structures and develop new ones, to help modernise the square. In 2009 however, these plans were shelved indefinitely following that year's global recesion. Ashcroft spokesman Ranald Phillips stated in the aftermthath, "It's going to take a while for the housing market to recover to justify building hundreds of new homes ... There's nothing we can do about that ... When the banks sort their muddle out, then we will start to move on." True to form however, ownership of Anglia Square shortly changed hands and the proposed redevelopments were completely forgotten.
Thus, it would be fair to say that empty pledges litter the site's history. Will 2024's complete overhaul go ahead? Although history and local residents argue against this, common sense and signed planning contracts say it's inevitable.
I guess I am not against this. Having a half-empty and impressively ill-maintained plaza dominate part of the town center is perhaps not a great indication to outsiders of Norwich's cultural and social richness. Nonetheless, I am fond of the look and feel of Anglia Square, we don't design buildings like that anymore much the same as we don't build castles anymore. However, although I am not looking forward to another generic shopping development springing up in its place, I can accept that father time's hand renders all things obselete or anachronistic at some point.
I just like the place so I've taken some pictures of it.
