Area Seven
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Phoebe Merrick

Area Setting and Landscape Settlement Pattern Open and other spaces Building Form Streets and Street furniture Pedestrian Routes Trees, hedges and other landscspe features Boundary Features Consultation Process

Settlement Pattern

The area includes a substantial industrial estate on the south-west. There is a variety of public and communal buildings to the south-east. North of these the area is wholly residential.

The Romsey Industrial Estate is largely self-contained with a separate entrance for vehicles from Fishlake Meadows. The presence of a low railway bridge on the nearby A3057 causes large vehicles to use Fishlake Meadows when seeking access to the Industrial Estate.

The only shop is in Mercer Way. The Sun Inn lies on the extreme south of the area, and faces Winchester Road. It is next to the low railway bridge known as the Sun Arch.

Nearby there are several public and communal establishments.

Hayter House

These include county council offices in the Master’s House and the Register Office in Hayter House.

Nightingale Lodge is a low-rise block of flats built some forty years ago. It provides homes for elderly people. Nearby is Nightingale House which contains the shell of Romsey’s Workhouse. It has been comprehensively renovated and extended to provide sheltered housing for elderly people. These buildings are set in their own curtilages and are reached from footpaths or carparks.

Adjacent to Great Well Drive is a doctor’s surgery and opposite it, a hut used by the Red Cross. The grounds of Romsey County Junior School are adjacent but there is no access from Great Well Drive. The school is reached from Mercer Way or by a footpath from Cupernham Lane. The school grounds separate the groups of housing that surround them.

The area contains a mixture of housing types. Most of the buildings are two-storeys high, although some of the units on the Industrial Estate are taller. There is considerable variety in house size, with for example, small terrace houses to the south-west of Fishlake Meadows estate and larger houses further north. Most of the streets and houses are laid out in a curving manner and the houses are set back from the street frontage, some being reached along communal drives.

In many parts of Fishlake Meadows and lower Cupernham, it is not apparent which road is which. Most of the area is criss-crossed with pedestrian routes which make it very permeable. Some houses are grouped so that there is no clear distinction between public and private space. This has the effect of giving a spacious feel to the area but makes it difficult for the passer-by to know what areas are public highway.

The plots in New Road and Cupernham Lane were laid out many years before the rest of the area was developed. The houses in New Road and Old Road are parallel to the roadway and have small front gardens between them and the pavements. By contrast, the houses in Cupernham Lane have substantial front gardens and no common building line. Their plots of land are of a regular width and all slope downhill to the west.

Mercer Way is a former council development of terrace houses, with two blocks of flats and to the west some bungalows near the canal. A number of the terraces are arranged around courtyards with communal parking arrangements. In the main part of the road, the terraces are laid out in such a way that they are not parallel to the street line.

To the west and south of the school are more houses, mostly terraced. Some of these houses front onto the roadway while others are grouped around open spaces. Building lines are mostly staggered, giving a casual feel to the area.

Design Recommendation

	The residential character of the area should be preserved.
	Nightingale House and Nightingale Lodge should be signed more clearly.