Chelmsford, New Street 1920

Photo ref: 69027X

More about this scene

The new library and mayoral suite were seen as the first phase of a new block of civic buildings, though in fact it was another 30 years before the rest of the site - the Civic Centre and Civic Theatre - was opened. In the meantime, the lower end of Duke Street, opposite the cathedral, was largely being given over to another administrative development: County Hall. Essex County Council had been formed in 1888, the same year as Chelmsford Borough Council, and had initially held their meetings in the Shire Hall. However, they soon outgrew those notoriously encumbered rooms and tried scattering their departments around the town, in various rented buildings. For a while, these included the Grammar School's recently vacated Georgian classroom. In 1903 some new administrative offices were built just behind, in King Edward Avenue. Finally, the Council decided to combine all its activities in a new County Hall, to be built on the corner of Threadneedle Street. The construction programme was delayed by the war, but the five-storey block was at last ready in 1931. It gained extra wings and offices as the decade wore on, creeping along Duke Street and engulfing the old school. The 1930s also saw the opening of Chelmsford's first proper bypass. The new thoroughfare swept in a wide arc from the old Stump Cross, and along Van Diemen's Road, to join Baddow Road at a new roundabout by the Army & Navy pub. In keeping with its new role, the pub mutated from a modest, square- fronted, 18th-century building into an expansive mock-Tudor roadhouse. From here, the bypass crossed the floodplain of the Chelmer and rejoined the Colchester road on the far side of Springfield. The first leg of the road was christened Princes Road, after the future King George VI, who performed the ribbon-cutting duties on 23 May 1932. New London Road was no longer the newest road to London.