There’ll be dancing on the Hoe again as Drake’s port begins to punch its weight

The Luftwaffe blitzed Plymouth for two months in 1941 and destroyed 20,000 houses, 100 pubs, 42 churches, 24 schools, eight cinemas and six hotels. In a symbolic act of defiance many of the survivors formed up behind the lady mayoress and danced on the Hoe, where Sir Francis Drake had played his similarly symbolic game of bowls almost 400 years earlier. The Germans exultantly claimed that Plymouth could never be rebuilt. The city’s next response was to produce a blueprint for a New Plymouth — the Abercrombie Plan, Sir Patrick Abercrombie being the foremost town-planner of the day. Ironically, his plan’s partial implementation meant the destruction of more historic buildings than were lost to Hitler.

Today Plymouth is following another new plan, drawn up by another celebrated planner, Andrew Mackay, who was responsible for much of the revitalised Barcelona. A new shopping centre has been erected at Drake Circus; Armada Way, the pedestrian avenue from the station to the Hoe, has been ‘improved’; Sutton Harbour has sprouted trendy bars and restaurants; scaffolding is everywhere. Despite all this, I have an uneasy feeling that, for decades at least, the Germans won and the heart was ripped out of a once-great city. The conurbation is one of the 20 most populous in England, but its style seldom matches its size. Part of the reason is that missing heart. The state-of-the art headquarters of the Western Morning News is in a business park on the north side of the A38 dual carriageway. Like the nearby Derriford Hospital, it is cut off from the core of the city. The ferry terminal linking Plymouth to France and Spain is way out in the bleak Millbay docks. Great cities such as New York, Sydney or Naples are enhanced by great ships docking in their centres. Not so, sadly, the port of Drake and the Pilgrim Fathers.