Description

Ninety minutes was all it took to change the face of Canterbury for ever. In one terrifying raid in the early hours of 1 June 1942, a large part of the city centre was destroyed or badly damaged. As planners began to outline their vision for post-war development, the rows began — and sometimes it seems as though they have never stopped. Such was the scope of early blueprints that some guardians of our past feared they would achieve what Hitler had failed to finish; the destruction not just of part of our history but of the city’s character, too And the city fathers did, indeed, try to be visionary: planning for the growth in traffic they knew would come; accommodating a bigger bus station and a multi-storey car park within the city walls for everyone’s convenience. Their beliefs seemed to fit in with the spirit of the age. Out with the old; in with the new. A unique chance to sweep away the worst of centuries past and build a brave new Elizabethan world.