Sketch plan of redevelopment of Southwark and the South Bank

1 document

The document has been dated through reference to the cost of a battleship being £1,000,000. A debate raged in the period immediately after the first world war as to the necessity of a large fleet, and the figure of £1,000,000 for a battlership became a much quoted factoid.

The Southwark plan is centred on the Collegiate Church of St. Thomas of Canturbury and is an attempt at a wholesale municipal redevelopment including an art gallery, baths, a market and courts of justice. In notes Richmond asserts that the workmen on the scheme will be paid well, will invest their wages in New Colonial Stocks, and then emigrate to build new cities in new countries.

Verso is a plan for the South Bank on a similar scale, incorporating a National Theatre, "grey granite, white marble, statues to be in bronze", flower market in the shape of a Tudor Rose and an avenue of Shakespearean figures.