Investing in the public realm to help kick-start improvements to the quality of a town’s offer, so it thrives in the next phase of its history
The Cross
Caldicot, Wales
£1.6m
Monmouthshire County Council (design and construction by Chris Jones Regeneration, Roberts Limbrick, Capita)
2021
Town (pop. 9,815)
Community / Economy / Environment / Health & Well-being
Mixed
Creation of walking networks linking key trip attractors / Improved connectivity to other sustainable transport modes / New or refurbished open or green space / Improvements to pedestrian comfort, convenience and personal safety / Improvements to route appearance / Reduction of traffic speeds / Deprioritisation of vehicles / Development of commercial, retail, leisure, residential, civic or historic buildings
The village of Caldicot, in south Wales, originally grew around its Norman castle, which sits in a country park and remains a key feature of the town today. In the 1960s, Caldicot rapidly expanded into a town on the back of the growth of the local steelworks. Today, it is an expanding commuter settlement, well placed alongside the South Wales Mainline (which links it to Cardiff, Newport, Gloucester, Bristol and London) and the M4/M48.
The commuter population is expected to continue to grow, with two sites in the town earmarked for housing in Monmouthshire’s Local Development Plan. Caldicot’s local centre needs to meet the needs of both this expanding population and its existing community. It needs to encourage new arrivals to spend money on retail and food and drink in the local community, rather than in the urban centres where they work. However, the town centre is relatively small, and the building stock rather tired, with the aesthetics of the 1960s to 1980s still very evident in the urban design. Combined with vacant units and a lower-end retail offer, its draw has been limited compared to competing centres nearby.
With many people commuting by rail, and the castle and country park becoming a greater part of the town’s ‘offer’ and hosting an increasing number of events, Caldicot’s streetscape also needs to facilitate quick and easy active travel connections between the town centre, country park, train station and outlying residential areas. Otherwise, there is a danger that growing traffic levels will lead to periods of congestion and parking issues.
With most of the town centre’s building stock in private ownership, the Council’s options for enhancing the quality of the urban fabric are limited. But it has seen an opportunity to potentially stimulate private investment by improving the quality of the public realm and transport network – as landowners may then be more confident and motivated to match this uplift in quality.
The Cross, an open area at the eastern end of the pedestrianised high street, was identified as a prime location to begin these improvements. Although home to key elements of the town’s historic identity (such as The Cross Inn, war memorial and village sign), it was a dated and unloved public space with badly located street clutter that didn’t encourage people to stop and relax. Traffic on the adjacent Sandy Lane/ Chepstow Road dominated the area and cut it off from Church Road, which leads up to the castle and country park.
The Cross is now an inviting destination in its own right. The central area is an attractive, level square, ideal for holding outdoor events and markets. Around the edge, there is space for café style seating outside neighbouring businesses. Updated and better positioned seating encourages pedestrians to not pass straight through but to stop and appreciate their surroundings. Trees and planting soften the space and provide a habitat for wildlife. Trees are planted in tree pits, which will accommodate their root systems and absorb rainwater run-off (from which pollutants will be naturally filtered by the soil).
To help pedestrians with their onward journeys, the space has been re-engineered to better facilitate interchange with other sustainable transport. The bus stops have been relocated to be less visually intrusive and now meet current accessibility standards. Intuitive links for pedestrians and cyclists connect the square to local and national active travel routes – in particular, Church Road.
A moratorium on shared spaces put in place by the UK Government during the design process meant that the design team had to think creatively about how to overcome the severance effect of Sandy Lane/Chepstow Road. Signage and a high contrast block paved raised table decrease vehicle speeds and heighten drivers’ awareness of other road users. A zebra crossing across the raised table gives pedestrians priority, while low profile, 60mm chamfered kerbs (which can be detected by guide dogs), tactile paving and the high contrast carriageway surface help people with visual impairments to move safely through the space. Design elements from the square are mirrored in the public realm space on the opposite side of the road, such as in the paving, seating and planting. The overall effect is of a single cohesive space, where pedestrians have priority.
A subsequent scheme has created a safe pedestrian route all the way along Church Road, past the primary school, to the castle and country park. Three side roads have their Give Way line set back from their junctions, with the pavements on either side connected by raised tables, creating some of the first continuous footways in Wales. Church Road’s pavements have been widened, in places creating informal crossing points. Build-outs force drivers to slow down and yield to oncoming traffic. Planting strips and buildouts have provided space for rain gardens. These have made the street more attractive while providing natural drainage and enhancing biodiversity. This new pedestrian route brings residents and school children up from the town centre and encourages visitors to the castle and country park to walk down and spend time and money in the town.
Since The Cross re-opened, traffic speeds along Sandy Lane/Chepstow Road have reduced, with the 85th percentile speed dropping from the top of the 30-40mph bracket to the middle of the 20-30mph bracket. The mean speed through the Church Street junction is now just 18mph. These reductions are greater than speed reductions recorded in other parts of Caldicot since Wales introduced a default 20mph speed limit on restricted roads.
Stimulating an uplift in Caldicot town centre’s offer and motivating private landowners to invest in their own properties is a long-term process. However, the enhanced look and feel of The Cross has already influenced surrounding businesses. The owners of The Cross Inn renovated the outside of this historic building, while the sandwich shop, opticians and two restaurants have all taken advantage of an ongoing council grant scheme (funded by the Welsh Government’s Transforming Towns programme). This has helped the owners of these commercial buildings in the town centre to improve their frontages and feel part of the enhanced public realm experience.
The design standards used for The Cross have been integrated into a ‘design toolkit’ for Caldicot’s town centre buildings. This encourages landowners to use higher quality materials and design standards, and to ensure that the changes they make contribute to creating a unified look and feel for Caldicot town centre. This will help to make it as desirable and buoyant as other towns in this southeast corner of Wales.
The council fostered a collaborative approach to design and delivery, involving local groups and organisations with a long-term interest in the area. The design team embraced a holistic and cross-professional approach that helped when facing unexpected issues during construction and the need to change the design.
Keeping the bigger picture aims in mind was important when balancing progressive design ideas and new best practice (such as the Active Travel Act Guidance) with traditional design tools (such as road safety audits and the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges), which are inherently risk averse.