Character Assessment Area No 20 - West Street
Located in the centre of Fareham and forming the southern core of the existing and future primary retail core of the town.
The retail and business units
are aligned in linear structure and facing on to the street.
There is at mixture of two to four storey buildings varying in
age, style, size and design. The essential character of the
structure is that all of the buildings form the street edge and
are focused as a continuous frontage. The gaps in the street
frontage to the south will be filled by the new Market Quay
development.
Despite the continuous frontages, there is not a strong sense of enclosure. This is due to the wide dimension of West Street and exacerbated where traffic flows through to Quay Street.
The area has a fine urban
grain reflecting the original relatively narrow plots. The
exception being West Quay house which has a very wide plot albeit
that it has been sub-divided on the ground floor into retail
units. Plot sizes range between 3.2m and 16.8m in width
reflecting the varying ages of development and redeveloped west.
Landscaping is limited, with planting within the pedestrianised shopping area.
All properties have a reasonably consistent domestic scale of between two and four stories but vary in terms of their overall mass and resultant impact. With the exception of West Quay House (and gaps in the southern street frontage) this variation does not detract from the sense of cohesiveness of the area.
The area displays a large
palette of materials and detailing which reflects the various
ages of development. Buildings developed during the Edwardian
period or earlier are generally of brick or render with clay
tiled roofs and domestic sash windows, including oriel and bay
windows. The variety, strength and quality of detailing provides
significant visual interest but which is generally related to the
upper floors. The design of modern shopfronts generally do not
relate well to the upper floors and so detracts from the quality
of the streetscape.
The modern buildings vary from brick to concrete and do not reflect the organization of the earlier facades and are a discordant feature of the area.
Character Assessment Area 21 - Wickham Road and Osborn Road.
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