People used to live in Torquay town centre. It was a different place to what it is today, a blend of housing, manufacturing, entertainment, community, alongside businesses and shops of all sizes and types.
This all changed in the mid-twentieth century.
Planning and redevelopment produced a town centre dominated by shopping. It wasn’t an accident or from consumer demand. Now the collapse of that twentieth century retail-centred model is clear to see in empty shops, streets deserted after nightfall, and a reputation for anti-social behaviour.
Only by understanding how and why ‘big’ retail came to dominate our urban central area can we begin to imagine a new future.
Torquay is a relatively new town. At the close of the eighteenth century the population was less than 800, most living around the harbour and in the settlement at Torre. During the following decades these fishing and farming settlements were transformed into a health spa, largely catering for those suffering with Consumption. Nevertheless, the town only grew slowly to around 6,000 by the 1840s.
Then in 1848 the railway arrived and a decade later the population had doubled as Torquay became a new type of Victorian town, a tourist resort.
The affluent lived in hillside villas, perhaps in the suburbs of Wellswood, the Warberries, or Chelston, preferably with a sea view; or maybe in sophisticated town houses near the Strand.
The newly arrived working classes, on the other hand, occupied inland tenements in Pimlico, Swan Street and George Street, up to five floors high to fit more people in. There was no running water, and sewage would run in the streets when heavy rain caused the Fleet to overflow.
Torquay's working classes occupied inland tenements such as that in Pimlico
These unhealthy conditions and overcrowding inevitably led to outbreaks of disease. In 1832 and 1849 cholera came to town, the latter outbreak lasting for six weeks leading to 66 deaths mainly in the oldest and impoverished communities.
A growing awareness of the dangers of waterborne diseases caused Torquay to adopt the Public Health Act, the first meeting of the Local Board of Health taking place in September 1850.
Conditions then improved. The odoriferous river was confined to a tunnel which from then on flowed unseen toward its ultimate destination at the harbour. The Board also made “a good wide street between the bottom of Union Street and the Strand”.
This new thoroughfare by the name of Fleet Street replaced the narrow alleyways on both sides of the culverted river and was Torquay’s first redevelopment. But still the town continued to be home to thousands in close-knit, high-density, albeit poor, communities. And the resort kept growing; by 1900 over 33,00 residents lived in a place that was calling itself the richest town in the nation.
Up to the mid-twentieth century all town centres sustained a mix of social and economic functions, including residential properties, small-scale commercial and industrial enterprises and a variety of social activities centred around clubs or churches.
But in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a general enthusiasm for ‘urban renewal’ and ‘modernisation’.
A public planning system was established, operated for the most part by local authorities. However, those councils didn’t possess the powers or resources to undertake redevelopment themselves. To overcome this challenge, they allied themselves with commercial interests and used compulsory purchase powers to acquire key sites and deliver them to developers.
Prime sites in town centres were the most commercially appealing for developers and investors but also among the most fiscally appealing for local authorities. This was due to the system of local taxation resting upon property values, known as ‘the rates’.
For political reasons residential and industrial property were heavily shielded from the burden of local taxation and so retail property bore by far the heaviest tax load. Local authorities accordingly had a strong interest in promoting the growth of land and property values in pursuit of high-value retailing, ever-increasing land values, and the subsequent tax income.
Every town wanted the best shops and the leading retail chains were especially seen as an important mark of status and prosperity. This was particularly true for Torquay which needed to maintain its position at the apex of Britain’s coastal resorts.
By the early 1960s Torquay’s population only stood at around 54,000, though many thousands more were visiting every week during the tourist season. The best shopping experiences, high-quality restaurants and entertainment were part of the offer to visitors. We built it and they came… for a while at least.
Torquay’s Union Square shopping centre was built in 1982, with Fleet Walk following later that decade. Alongside these tourist-tempting offers came the vast multi-storey car parks.
Amidst the drive to redevelop and raise property values, however, the town centre then became prohibitively expensive for all but the most profitable commercial enterprises.
The backstreet small industries, workshops, pubs, churches and community centres were progressively replaced with chain stores, offices, and car parks. The urban inhabitants were relocated to generally better-quality housing in the suburbs, though the framework of institutions and physical spaces that supported shared civic life fragmented while outside of trading hours the streets emptied.
Yet, as we have seen, the system of development control and financial incentives was not regulated purely by market forces. The consequence was an oversupply of expensive retail property and gaps started to appear from Castle Circus to the Strand.
And soon there would be competition. In the early 1990s the Willows shopping centre opened on the outskirts of town, the first major out-of-town shopping alternative, soon to be followed by others such as Asda, Lidl, and Aldi; all offering free parking.
The irresistible shift to online shopping was accelerated by the Covid-19 lockdown which also gave the option of working from home, many of us quickly becoming familiar with virtual meetings. It took only a few years for the town centre, with its first-floor offices and ground-level shops and banks, to become a relic of the twentieth century.
As the national chains succumbed or withdrew, in their place came entrepreneurs spotting an opportunity to launch low startup-cost businesses. We then saw a proliferation of beauty salons, tattoo parlours, mini markets run by new communities, fast food outlets, and vape shops, some with questionable trading methods.
And so, a haphazard reoccupation of Torquay town centre began.
Now Union Square Shopping Centre is soon be demolished and redeveloped into affordable housing.
There’s a lot of derelict land, empty office space, and underused car parks in the town centre. These areas could accommodate hundreds of small apartments, thus freeing up larger suburban homes for families. We could even be looking at an eco-village in the centre of Torquay, bringing life back to those abandoned and menacing back streets; recreating community, but this time without the squalor.
And how about liberating the long-buried Fleet from its subterranean prison? We’re predicting future water shortages due to climate change while we’re losing millions of gallons of fresh water into the Bay. By once again utilising Torquay’s ancient water supply, we could irrigate an urban oasis in Temperence Street.
Maybe we should keep looking to the past to envision a future for our town centre.
Just as an outbreak of disease in the mid-nineteenth century began the emptying of Torquay; another pandemic of the early twenty-first century could see the return of Torquinians to its urban heart.
