Unbuilt Britain

[trash80]

The London & Birmingham Canal

This was actually a proposal to link Birmingham and Coventry by canal, the two cities only have an indirect link to this day. The canal, proposed in 1828, was to have been about 18 miles long and linked the Coventry canal at Brinklow to the Stratford Canal near Birmingham going via Coventry. Unfortunately the proposal was a little late in the day and not sufficiently planned out to gain much investor interesy, plus would have required some interesting conversations with land owners for the land the canal would have cut through. I found the proposal pamplet by accident at Stratford-upon-Avon archives when i was doing my masters (SBTRO DR 18/16/3). I haven't seen anything much else about the canal elsewhere.

There were also a few proposal for Birmingham "Ship Canals", one was to widen the Worcester & Birmingham Canal to allow boats up to 2-300 tons up into Birmingham city centre (would have been quite a sight!) from the Severn.

 

[Ogrebear]

The original plans for the Church of England's Liverpool Cathedral, the largest cathedral and religious building in Britain, built on St James's Mount in Liverpool. Based on a design by 22-year-old Giles Gilbert Scott, who was still an architect pupil and had no existing buildings to his credit, it was constructed between 1904 and 1978, however the bridge over the cemetery was never built and the east doorway is now an outdoor cafe. The total external length of the building, is 207 yards (189 m) making it the longest cathedral in the world. It's full name is the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool.

Pic from Alamy.

 

[Ogrebear]

What would the Anglican Cathedral look like with two central towers?

An early design for Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. Image J Speakman (flipped). An early option for the design of the Anglican Cathedral was for it to be built with two central towers rather than one. Not everyone was happy with the plans for the building so the young architect, Giles Gilbert Scott (later knighted), modified the design several times, even once construction of the building had begun. The most drastic change was the shift from two towers to one.

The making of the cityscape

I was honoured to be among the first people to see the astounding views from the Museum of Liverpool's second floor windows. I visited the building when it was still a building site, and the windows hadn't even been put in! I'd been working on plans of the galleries for years but this hadn't...

www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

 

[Ogrebear]

More on the Liverpool Catholic Cathedral

After the war and Lutyens’ death, Adrian Gilbert Scott (brother of Giles Gilbert, the architect of the Anglican Cathedral) was commissioned to scale down the Lutyens plans, keeping the massive dome feature, but with a budget of some £4,000,000. But the project meet with heavy criticism and was dismissed as an option by the new Archbishop of Liverpool John Carmel Heenan.

 

[Julius Vogel]

I saw the model of the Catholic cathedral in the Liverpool Museum, apparently took 12 men to make it, to give you an idea of size.

Would have bankrupted the diocese to maintain it, had they ever managed to find the money to build it. Which needs WW2 not to happen

 

[PMN1]

There were also a few proposal for Birmingham "Ship Canals", one was to widen the Worcester & Birmingham Canal to allow boats up to 2-300 tons up into Birmingham city centre (would have been quite a sight!) from the Severn.

Sound interesting.

 

[Devvy]

Just to pop back to trains briefly, saw this from BBC Archive today about double deck trains in the UK. Not sure what’s more surprising, that they managed to get that double deck train running in Kent, or that they apparently let a minister of state operate the train for a bit! 😆

https://fb.watch/n00HG-J49X/

 

[Mark1878]

Just to pop back to trains briefly, saw this from BBC Archive today about double deck trains in the UK. Not sure what’s more surprising, that they managed to get that double deck train running in Kent, or that they apparently let a minister of state operate the train for a bit! 😆

https://fb.watch/n00HG-J49X/

If this is BBC please give that link not facebook

 

[Devvy]

If this is BBC please give that link not facebook

It was the BBC Archive posting a video to facebook, the link was correct. However, I've also now google searched for a BBC link, and found this duplicate video directly on the beeb:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/double_decker_train/zhmrvk7

 

[Ogrebear]

It was the BBC Archive posting a video to facebook, the link was correct. However, I've also now google searched for a BBC link, and found this duplicate video directly on the beeb:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/double_decker_train/zhmrvk7

Those carriages are fascinating. So much What If right there.

I was trying to figure out a way to reform and revolutionise British railways/transport - was trying to figure out a 'reverse' Beeching where more investment, more rail is built - oh and Liverpool keeps its elevated railway too.

 

[PMN1]

Those carriages are fascinating. So much What If right there.

The wiki article is not kind........

The intention to carry more passengers in a train of the same length as other contemporary stock was met, with the two 4-DD units having 1,104 seats compared to 800 in other units of similar age. However it was found that the additional number of passengers meant longer time spent at stations to allow passengers to get on and off.] In practice, the upper compartments were cramped and poorly ventilated because the upper-level windows were impossible to open due to tight clearance. To resolve this problem, the compartments were pressure-ventilated, but the equipment proved to be unreliable.

SR Class 4DD - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CaptainCalvert]

The wiki article is not kind........

The intention to carry more passengers in a train of the same length as other contemporary stock was met, with the two 4-DD units having 1,104 seats compared to 800 in other units of similar age. However it was found that the additional number of passengers meant longer time spent at stations to allow passengers to get on and off.] In practice, the upper compartments were cramped and poorly ventilated because the upper-level windows were impossible to open due to tight clearance. To resolve this problem, the compartments were pressure-ventilated, but the equipment proved to be unreliable.

SR Class 4DD - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Same issue with double decker bus boarding and disembarking times. Sounds good in theory, but the extra delays are really annoying - the door and aisles and passengers are the same as in a single decker, but have more people to pasd through.
But if the alternative is same number of single deckers they are still better. just not as good as on paper.

 

[Ogrebear]

This one counts as 'partly made' rather than 'unbuilt', but it would have been fantastic if it had been completed to the intended height!

London's Watkin Tower.

Watkin's Tower - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Some What If:

See also pic here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/unbuilt-britain.510128/post-21952545

 

[Ogrebear]

https://www.insightguides.com/inspire-me/blog/wrens-plans-for-a-new-london

 

[Ogrebear]

I think most of these have been covered here, but in case not:

Unbuilt London

From a Ponte Vecchio-style bridge across the Thames to a monorail running through Regent Street.

neverwasmag.com

 

[UrbanNight]

Wren's plans for the City

This and other plans after the Great Fire of London, each more regular than the last:

How London might have looked: five masterplans after the great fire

From Wren’s wide boulevards to Newcourt’s uniform grids, a new exhibition reveals the alternative plans to rebuild London after it was destroyed by the great fire, and asks: what could it have looked like now?

www.theguardian.com

 

[steamboy]

https://www.insightguides.com/inspire-me/blog/wrens-plans-for-a-new-london

I like this, it looks very italian too.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

https://www.insightguides.com/inspire-me/blog/wrens-plans-for-a-new-london

Wren's plans would have certainly helped lay the groundwork later on when early ideas for what became the Ringways and related roads/avenues through the city were being considered.

In 1903, a Royal Commission on London Traffic was established, and it reported in 1905. It demanded mass road widening and new bye-laws to control development and prevent obstructions to road plans.

The Commission's core proposal was for two major "avenues" that would quarter London's central area. An east-west avenue would link Bayswater with Whitechapel via the City, while a north-south route would link Holloway to Elephant and Castle. Both would carry trams and four-track underground railways would run beneath.

Combine that with original plan for Fenchurch Street station to terminate slightly west at Lime Street, followed by subsequent plans to place the mainline railway underground (potentially allowing the LTS to link up with other mainline routes e.g. City Widened) in favour of a new wide road dubbed Stepney Greeting and from looking at existing map you have an additional road roughly south of Leadenhall Market by Gracechurch Street.

 

[PMN1]

Was reading an online article not so long ago about the UK's problems with untreated sewerage being discharged into the rivers following anything like slightly higher rainfall.

It said one of the main reasons for this was Bazagette's design winning the competition for a sewer system for London.

His design combined removal of run off from rain and sewerage in the same system and it can no longer cope when it rains much, however, it also said there were other designs that separated the rain run off and sewerage out into two different systems. It didn't say why they lost, I suspect cost may have been a factor, and it didn't say who proposed them, I suspect they are in the book the article was promoting.

Where London led, everyone else followed and the rest is history.

Has anyone seen these other plans?

 

[El Pip]

His design combined removal of run off from rain and sewerage in the same system and it can no longer cope when it rains much, however, it also said there were other designs that separated the rain run off and sewerage out into two different systems. It didn't say why they lost, I suspect cost may have been a factor, and it didn't say who proposed them, I suspect they are in the book the article was promoting.

Where London led, everyone else followed and the rest is history.

Has anyone seen these other plans?

I know Edwin Chadwick who was heavily involved in Public Health at the time proposed a 'separate system' scheme. But I've never seen any plans for it, in large part I think because he wasn't an engineer or anything similar so had no ability to design such a scheme.

The details I have seen do point to his non-engineering background. He wanted the system to consist of glazed pipes with a carefully balanced constant flow of sewage through them so they were self cleaning. This require a ridiculous system of carefully graded pipes and also meant it was all but impossible to add new connections to the system without ruining that balance. Indeed if too many people in one part of town had children or otherwise expanded their household that would also unbalance the system.

Ignoring all that a two pipe system is always going to be about twice as expensive as your are duplicating everything. Any small savings you get from sharing the same excavations will be lost in the fact that two small pipes are far less efficient than one large pipe. So even if the 'separate system' had been proposed on a more rational basis it would lose out on cost.