‘Cathedrals of commerce’ : A guide through the Golden Age of the British High Street

The ‘chain store’ has often been condemned by architectural historians for eroding local distinctiveness and for responding neither to context nor to local and regional building materials and styles. In 1955, The Architectural Review published the now-famous ‘Outrage’ essay by Ian Nairn, in which he recounted his journey by car from Southampton to Carlisle, visiting major towns along the route. He complained about the ‘nowhere sprawl’ that he found, reducing ‘all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre pattern’. Subsequent critics have talked about ‘clone-town UK’, where high streets have become ‘bland identikit places dominated by a few bloated retail behemo