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C O N T E X T 1 7 9 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 31 HADRIAN’S WALL 1,900 years to its role as the largest fort on Hadrian’s Wall. The Roman town occupied a critical location where the wall strode from the north side of the River Eden to the south. The 1,000-strong cavalry fort Petriana, which is sometimes called Uxelodunum or Stanwix Fort, marked the northern bridgehead and the fort of Lugavalium occupied the south. This strategic importance echoed down the centu- ries as the city was passed between England and Scotland and back. The north of the river is now occupied by the genteel suburb of Stanwix, its most historic portions laid out by a young Joseph Paxton on land owned by his patron, the Duke of Devonshire. To the south lies the historic city. Carlisle holds the distinction of being the only English city not to appear in the Domesday Book, having been north of the border while the book was compiled in 1085–86. By 1092 the city was conquered by William II, an event cel- ebrated in the ‘William Rufus’ Wetherspoons at Botchergate, south of the old English Gate into the city. The £77 million English Gate scheme is a dynamic mix of sensitive reuse of the citadels, substantial retention of the unlisted but important townscape frontage of the 1936 Woolworths and Burton block and an area of new build to the west within the confines of the long-demolished Georgian gaol and its yards, cleared in the 1930s. One radical intervention is the striking out of a new second access point into the site through the 19th-century gaol wall at its southern end. Breaking through a section of surviving gaol wall, the loss of material was counterbalanced by the opportunities of a new route connect- ing the public space at the heart of the new scheme with a further public realm project in the forecourt of the 1848 Citadel Station. The route gives a third point of access to the amphitheatre at the heart of the University of Cumbria scheme, alongside a historic route at Bush Brow and a new entrance carved from the Woolworths block. With three points of access, the public space is better animated and a meeting point of multiple routes, rather than just a break in a linear route. The approved scheme here has been subject to lengthy development and discussion between the University of Cumbria, its architect Day Architectural of Manchester, the then owner of the building Cumbria County Council, Carlisle City Council (now subsumed into the new unitary Cumberland Council) and Historic England. Funding comes from the Borderlands Growth Deal, a joint funding bid developed across the counties that frame the Scots/English Border (Cumberland, Dumfries and Galloway and Northumberland). The main contractor for the scheme is now appointed, with a start in 2024 and a 2026 opening. Across the road at the Grade II* Citadel Station, a £27 million suite of works proposes a reorientation of the station from being entirely east-facing to being double-fronted. This will allow for the relocation of unsightly and pedestrian-unfriendly, short-stay car parking and replacement bus services from the front of the station to a large new multi-modal inter- change at the station’s formerly, very secondary western rear. With architects BDP leading on the station’s interior works and alongside WSP on public realm works to the east and west, the objective of the scheme is to create a fitting new public realm to the eastern frontage, co-joined The Fratry building, the dining hall of the Cathedral Priory in medieval times, has become an education and events space with a new gothic pavilion. (Photo: Feilden Fowles, copyright Peter Cook)