The Regeneration of Chepstow
Details of the award winning project to redevelop Chepstow's High Street.
When Cywaith Cymru was approached by Monmouthshire County Council in January 2003 there had already been numerous studies to develop ideas on how to improve the town centre. There were three main objectives: to create a quality space conducive to retailing and visitor activity, to calm traffic and improve the pedestrian environment, and to generate economic potential for the town centre. It was perceived that while Abergavenny and Monmouth were flourishing, Chepstow was lagging behind and needed a face lift to catch up with its neighbours. Finally, with a successful application for funding from Welsh European Funding Office and the Welsh Development Agency, as well as funding allocated from the local authority, a scheme outlined by the landscape architects and engineers, Atkins, was to be implemented.
Cywaith Cymru's role was to identify opportunities for public art within this scheme. However, they realised that if artists were not brought on board the design team as soon as possible, before all structural decisions were made, then these opportunities would become much narrower in their scope. Artists Howard Bowcott and Tim Shutter were selected to work closely with Cywaith Cymru and the landscape architect from Atkins.
Beaufort Square was seen as the key civic space in the new scheme. Previously it was hardly a square at all, rather a very steep bank between the High St and Bank St with a large circular planting area. By levelling the ground here a new usable public square could be created. In the original concept design put forward by Atkins, the levelling of Beaufort Square created a high and long wall between the new square and Bank Street, which could have been rather forbidding and claustrophobic. This wall was the first area Howard Bowcott addressed, firstly in terms of the space, sightlines and the flow of people, and secondly to bring a narrative theme into the artwork.
Taking inspiration from one of Chepstow's most famous landmarks, the Portwall, Howard Bowcott and the landscape architect Simon Andrews, designed a series of convex and concave curved walls alternating with steps leading down to the square allowing for pedestrian traffic across the square and clear sight lines from all directions. Howard then designed a frieze to be carved in relief within the walls, reflecting Chepstow's history. Bottles and other vessels, bread, cheese, game, and vegetables are just some of the images carved into the walls. Howard Bowcott collaborated with Tom Clark, a stone carver based in Somerset, delivering actual size charcoal drawings, which Tom transposed into shallow relief carving. The stone selected for the scheme is extremely hard and the detail of these carvings will barely weather in a hundred years. The relief sculpture also wraps around the back of the walls, to be seen from Bank Street, with Welsh and English text and poetry sandblasted into the stone.
The floorscape of Beaufort Square was also designed to incorporate narrow bands of coloured lettering, phrases and poetry. These bands of lettering are also used elsewhere in the scheme along the High Street and many of the phrases were gathered during community and school workshops with a local poet. There were other community art workshops where Howard Bowcott and Chepstow-based ceramic artist Ned Heywood worked with youth and school groups, researching and creating images of coins that were then made into ceramic blocks inlaid into the paving. Chepstow developed because of trade and the Portwall meant that the tolls could be charged on goods entering and leaving Chepstow, so coinage through the ages was an appropriate theme.
Widened pavements on either side of the High Street also created opportunities for artwork. Alongside the Barclays Bank, greater pedestrian space is provided on a split level, with a series of columns along the supporting wall. These columns were intended to create a visual distraction away from the imposing 1960's facade of the bank building and were seen as another potential for integrating art into the scheme. Tim Shutter enhanced the six columns, surmounting each one with a unique stone sphere carved, in ascending order, with apples, oak leaves, chains, rope, corn and salmon. Below each sphere a line of poetry is letter cut into the stone column, such as 'A Chepstow salmon's worth his weight in gold, unlike the flabby fish in London sold.'
Another major change proposed to the centre of Chepstow was the creation of an accessible and usable pedestrian square where originally a road linking the High Street and Bank Street had been. The creation of a stepped plaza area seemed to offer the opportunity for another artist to contribute to the scheme. Through a design competition, Andre Wallace was commissioned to make 'Boatman'.
'Boatman' is a sculpture in two parts, consisting of a bronze figure of a man sitting on a stone boat with another smaller boat nearby. The male figure sits looking in the direction of the river. The work is open to interpretation but does allude to Chepstow's past and future aspirations, its location near the river and the history of shipbuilding. The work creates a quiet, calm and intimate space within this new public square and is complemented by the surrounding Georgian architecture. By stylising and simplifying the human form, the work is figurative yet contemporary. The Boatman's pose, while contemplative, presents a powerful focal point in the square.
Throughout the design and implementation process regular meetings were held with the Regeneration Working Group a local partnership group consisting of the local authority, the Chepstow Town Council and Chepstow Chamber of Commerce and Tourism. This project included a thorough and open consultation process with lengthy debates on every detail of the scheme. During this time, the local press were not always supportive. The building works disrupted people's everyday lives in Chepstow and made trading more difficult during the closure of the High Street. However, with the renovations complete and artworks now in place, the residents of Chepstow are expressing their pride and pleasure in the work.
Source: www.axisweb.org
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