Westgate Street in Gloucester dates back to Roman times and is one of the oldest and best preserved areas of Gloucester, and a main commercial route linking Gloucester Cathedral to the rest of the city. With an abundance of historical buildings and landmarks of importance, Westgate Street as part of a Heritage Action Zone, delivered a project to enhance the public realm with new furniture, planting and interpretation.
Led by landscape architects McGregor Coxall who designed new pockets of seating and planting along the length of Westgate Street, and complemented with a series of interpretation designs to deliver greater levels of understanding for place heritage and meaning.
New interventions included:
• A series of large groundwork bronze designs describing the historical, and no-longer standing, buildings that were once present in Westgate Street and now indicated by the already installed groundwork paving outlines that indicate each of the building’s architectural footprints.
• Historical narratives etched into the timber seating.
• Two new interpretation boards made from Enamel FX that were retro-fit to previous smaller boards allowing for more information and the full use of height for each location.
• Mosaic heritage artworks that were already present at the entrances of lanes running off Westgate Street were added to with small bronze narrative interpretations around the mosaics’ octagon borders to describe their meaning.
• Ten bronze brass-rubbing roundels celebrating the Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter were placed down the length of Westgate Street to create a ‘treasure hunt’ game to explore and find all the pieces. Local illustrator Ella Daniel-Lowe re-drew and simplified the illustrations, without losing their integrity, to ensure the making process and final result was optimised for purpose.
Interpretation fabrication and installation by Standard 8
