Commercial townscapes in the making

• Published in: Journal of historical geography Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 174 - 200
• Main Author: Whitehand, J.W.R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Elsevier Ltd 01.01.1984; Academic Press
• ISSN: 0305-7488; 1095-8614
• DOI: 10.1016/0305-7488(84)90117-8

The building types constructed between 1916 and 1965 in the central areas of two British towns Northampton, a free-standing county town, and Watford, a suburban town are examined in terms of the characteristics of the owners and architects responsible for their creation and the varied factors, local and national, affecting commercial building. Although local firms exercised considerable control over new building throughout the inter-war period in Northampton and local individuals played a major role in the 1920s in Watford, the overriding theme of the paper is the impact of the large-scale entry of retail chain-stores into development for owner occupation in the 1930s, and the growing involvement of property companies and insurance companies in speculative development after the mid-1950s. As the two town centres became integrated into the national commercial network and the national property market, outside architects and new architectural styles were increasingly employed, although speculative developers tended to be slower to adopt new styles than owner-occupiers and buildings in pre-war styles were constructed for a considerable period after both world wars in one or both of the town centres. The influx of outside owners and architects was accompanied by increases in the scale of development and the domination of new building by modern architecture. Other important factors influencing the character of development were the different historical legacies of the two towns. Watford's proximity to London, changes in the sizes of spheres of influence of the two centres, and the nature of property ownership within and on the edge of the two commercial cores.