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Phoebe Merrick

Settings/Landscape & Views Settlement Pattern Open and Other Spaces Building Form, page 1 Building Form, page 2 Materials, Fenestration & Chimneys Streets & Street Furniture Footpaths Trees and Hedges Boundary Features Consultation Process

Streets and Street Furniture

Each of Romsey’s main roads impinges on the outer core of the town centre. This area contains some local circulatory roads and some purely residential streets, which are often cul-de-sacs.

Traffic Sign dominating the approach to the Plaza from the town centre

Parts of these main roads pass through the outer core of Romsey’s town centre. They are noteworthy for their functionalism. They contain many traffic signs and directions boards that are out of scale with the surrounding buildings.

Winchester Road and Alma Road are further diminished by a network of overhead cables.

Cables in Winchester Road near the Plaza

Design Recommendations

	Main roads that lead to the town should be made welcoming and attractive to encourage visitors to come to the town centre.
	Wherever possible overhead cables should be buried.
	Bridges across roads should be enhanced so that they make attractive focal points for their neighbouring streets.
	The unaltered 1930s stretch of Winchester Road (Plaza Parade area) should be protected and preserved.

Local circulatory roads and residential streets

Traffic Management at junction of Station Road, Alma Road & Malmesbury Road.

The houses in Malmesbury Road are set well back from the road and are buffered by grass verges and chestnut trees. Sadly the spacious effect is spoilt by the presence of many parked cars. Both road surface and pavement surface in nearby Duttons Road show signs of much patching and therefore lack harmony.

The roads are covered with tarmac. Even in the residential streets there is an absence of alternative surface materials, except for a few parking bays marked out in brick setts in Fleming Place.

Most of the pavements are narrow and surfaced with tarmac. In many places, the slopes leading to dropped kerbs span the whole width of the pavement. Therefore pedestrians do not have a level horizontal surface on which to walk.

Station Road, Duttons Road (southern part), Greatbridge Road all act as local circulatory roads for traffic. They are residential roads which are not wide enough for the roles they have to play.

Most of the front gardens in these streets are too small to be turned into car parking places. Thus the integrity of the street lines has been preserved but with the drawback that the roads are lined with parked cars.

The other roads in the outer core of Romsey are primarily residential. Some of them are open at both ends. These include Princes Road which winds about and the nearby Jubilee Road that is very narrow. Others form cul-de-sacs for vehicles although having pedestrian access at each end.

Surfaces in Duttons Road.

The Harrage gives the appearance if being wide, partly because the building line is set back from the street. It has several parking bays for visitors.

Mountbatten Avenue is a wide road with grass verges beside the pavements with a series of parking bays. However the whole street has a neglected air, with a poor road surface, ill-kept bushes and pavements in need of refurbishment. Mitchell’s Close is in better shape.

Road use defined by brick setts.

Priestlands forms a circle with housing on both the inside and outside. The houses are well back from the road, mostly with conventional individual front gardens.

Vehicles and footpaths are separate in Lansdowne Gardens. Vehicles are restricted to the outer part of the area, and the houses are mostly reached from footpaths within the estate. However the house numbering system is unclear and causes much frustration.

The placement of electricity substations and junction boxes for communication cabling leaves much to be desired. While they are necessary, they are often situated in highly visible and intrusive locations.

Design Recommendations

Where practical consideration should be given to placing junction boxes less obtrusively.

Footpaths

One of the strengths of the outer core of Romsey is its permeability. There are many footpaths that enable pedestrians to walk without being next to traffic. These include paths beside Tadburn Lake and the canal, behind Station Road and west of Greatbridge Road amongst others. Some of these paths are inadequately lit and their surfaces and surroundings are poorly maintained. Such neglect is a waste of a valuable urban resource.

Knatchbull Close to Winchester Road.

The approach to the canal towpath is to the left of the security fence.

The Canal tow path starts by the Plaza and continues up to the railway bridge and beyond. The southern end of the canal path is sandwiched between a painted wall on the west and a high security fence on the Plaza side and access from Winchester Road involves climbing steps and there is no handrail.

A little path leads off to Mountbatten Avenue, another to Mitchell’s Close and a third to the railway station. Neither is signposted nor much cared for, although they are extensively used.

The path from the towpath to the railway station reaches a flight of steps that is useful but is poorly maintained.

Steps leading from the railway station

Railway tunnel.

Beside the station another tunnel joins the town centre to Fishlake Meadows, although it is subject to limited access rights. The southern side of this tunnel and the road approaching it are not particularly inviting.

Albany Road leads to a footpath that runs to Station Road behind Southern Counties Agricultural Trading Society (SCATS). This path is wide, half of it has a tarmac surface and the other half should be maintained as meadow land. The surface of the path is not entirely satisfactory.

Footpath between Station Road and SCATS

Landsdowne Close: the Fishlake stream is behind the bushes on the right

Lansdowne Close contains a network of footpaths that surround it and lead through its centre. The eastern side of the development contains a cul-de-sac that is adjacent to the Fishlake Stream. The stream is rather hidden behind an overgrown chain link fence.

The southern end of the Close has a footpath that leads down to Greatbridge Road and is used by pupils of the Romsey School although it is ill-lit and puddles form in wet weather. The whole through way needs enhancement.

Parallel with Greatbridge Road there is a footpath that leads from Priestlands to Mill Lane. This path is much liked as an alternative to avoid the traffic and the narrow, sloping pavements of Greatbridge Road and Cherville Street. Finally on the extreme west of the area, there is a rural path that leads from Priestlands by a braid of the Test to Hollman Drive.

Path behind Greatbridge Road

 

Design Recommendations

Footpaths in urban places should be well lit, accessible where possible to wheelchairs and buggies, adequately surfaced and adjacent hedges should be properly managed.

Trees, Hedges and other landscape features

Lombardy Poplars on the Rapids roundabout and lining the By-pass

The most prominent trees in this area are the Lombardy poplars that are found by the By-pass, including those on the roundabout at the junction of the A3090 and the A27. They are a significant feature of Romsey’s skyline.

Other trees near Tadburn Lake, in both Knatchbull Close and The Harrage contribute to the skyline. They include mature oak, ash, field maple and Scots pine, as well as smaller trees such as silver birch, rowan, alder and hawthorn. There are a number of ornamental trees in The Harrage which give the street the feeling of parkland.

Trees between Winchester Road and Knatchbull Close

Trees lining the approach road to Waitrose car park

There are a few bushes in Mountbatten Avenue, an area that would be enhanced with some imaginative planting. Alma Road has few trees. The most conspicuous are the firs in Winchester Road that obscure the symmetrical front of English Court, which should be the focus of Alma Road. There are small trees in the Alma Road car parks and some pleasing black poplars behind the telephone exchange.

The horse chestnut by the library provides a focal point in Station Road and is much valued by Romsonians. The avenue of red flowering horse chestnuts in Malmesbury Road makes that road special, but gradually the trees are being lost and not replaced.

Horse chestnut outside the library

There are no trees along the street in Greatbridge Road, but many are found in Priestlands and Lansdowne Gardens including lime, hawthorn, rowan, pine, prunus, birch and maple.

Hedgerows

This part of Romsey does not contain any ancient hedgerows and not many newer hedges either. There are however a number of short lengths of hedging along the frontages of individual properties, particularly in the older streets. The Romsey School has neatly kept hedges as have the offices of TVBC. Some of the older houses still have privet hedges.

The Canal is lined on either side with hedgerows but inadequate management means they do not show to advantage and sometimes overhang the pathway and water. The junction with the footpath through to Mountbatten Avenue includes a number of laurels that need a regular maintenance programme.

Design Recommendations

	Replace trees that die or are removed especially when they are members of a group
	Maintain hedges properly
	Where possible enhance new developments with trees and appropriate planting.

 

Boundary Features

Railway embankment and electricity sub-station, Bridge Road

The railway embankment provides both northern and eastern boundary to the outer core of Romsey town centre. The base of it is protected by chain link fencing which acts to trap litter right across the town. The embankment is prone to develop scrub and requires regular maintenance to keep it looking reasonable. Recently much of the undergrowth has been cleared which has improved the appearance of the surrounding areas.

The station approach is lined with railings that are painted black with gold tops. This gives a structure to that area, although the surrounding foliage detracts from the overall effect. Immediately to the south-east of the station, the occupiers of the property have felt the need to erect a prominent security fence, both at station level and at ground level which depersonalise the area. The old garden of the station house is now covered with weeds and is untended.

Railways around railway buildings that have found other uses

Detail of wall around Landsdowne Gardens

Other than the railway embankment, the boundary features are quite short. The most prominent and the most attractive is the wall around Lansdowne Gardens in Greatbridge Road. This wall surrounds the Gardens and in places has a tiled ridge capping the brickwork.

Baden-Powell Way

Wall and railings in Southampton Road

There are a number of other walls and fences screening people’s back gardens with varying effect of the street scene. Some make the neighbouring street seem impersonal. By contrast in Southampton Road, one of the houses has a low wall topped with railings that provides security whilst enhancing the street.

The bridges over the waterways are fairly inconspicuous. The metal railings over Tadburn Lake in Southampton Road are white, while further along, those leading from the Comrades Club are black. East of Southampton Road, this stream is fenced in a variety of styles that represent engineering rather than artistic solutions, including a chain link fence and several lengths of heavy industrial fencing and gates in black or bare metal.

View across Tadburn Lake from footpath to Knatchbull Close

Railway and road bridges over Fishlake

Opposite the end of Lansdowne Close the Fishlake stream is protected by a brick wall that stands awkwardly in front of the adjacent railway bridge. It is capped with stones and the brickwork is much pitted and does not match that of the nearby railway bridge over the stream. Next to this bridge there is a pedestrian tunnel under the railway that has a separate profile and is faced with different coloured bricks.

Design Recommendations

	Railings along any given watercourse should harmonise with each other
	Adjacent arches should match each other and nearby brickwork in profile and facing
	Owners of fences etc should be encouraged to co-ordinated their adjacent boundary features.

Old lamp standard by Tadburn Lake