Been & Gone – The Tricorn Centre

Been & Gone

The Tricorn Centre – Robert Marchant

It is difficult to imagine that there has been a more controversial building ever built in the city, than the Tricorn Centre, which stood in the heart of the commercial district, but survived less than 40 years.

Credit: Alexanderfbooth - commons.wikimedia.org

There are very few buildings anywhere in the UK that are as synonymous with a particular city or which have brought such fame or notoriety as the Tricorn managed to achieve for Portsmouth.

In the 1980s, the Tricorn was voted the third ugliest building in the UK and in 2001, in a poll of Radio 4 listeners, the most hated building in the country.

Prince Charles, not known for holding back on his views on architecture, reportedly described the Tricorn as; “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings”. Yet others admired the design and saw it as an outstanding example of Brutalist architecture.

Designed by the renowned architects Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon, the original working name of the centre had been The Casbah, but was changed to the Tricorn, due to the resemblance to a tricorn hat when viewed from the air.

Built in an attempt to revitalise the City Centre, at a cost to Portsmouth City Council of £2M, the Tricorn opened in 1966. It was hoped that premium stores would occupy the Tricorn but as there was no direct connection to Commercial Road, these stores never moved in and instead the Tricorn became home to many smaller retailers.

Occupiers included a Fine Fare supermarket and there were two pubs, The Casbah and The Golden Bell, as well as a live music venue originally named the Tricorn Club, later renamed Granny’s and subsequently Basins, which initially attracted such artists as Marc Bolan, Slade, Mud, The Sweet and Status Quo.

There was also a residential element to the Tricorn centre with 8 flats, but the poor quality of construction, particularly of the roofs, meant that the flats were soon damp, and by 1979, had been abandoned and boarded up.

By the 1980s, the Tricorn was becoming increasingly down at heel with many vacant shops and the neglect of the structure beginning to show. As one of the tallest publicly accessible structures in the region, the Tricorn was very sadly the scene of many suicide attempts and The Samaritans erected a plaque on the structure in an effort to assist. By the 1990s, with the future of the Tricorn being questioned, several moves were made to have the structure listed by English Heritage and the essayist Jonathan Meades reportedly commented that; “You don’t go knocking down Stonehenge or Lincoln Cathedral. I think buildings like the Tricorn were as good as that. They were great monuments of an age”.

Attempts to save the Tricorn failed and, in 2004, the bulldozers moved in and 9 months later the Tricorn was gone. The site was an integral part of the much vaunted but ultimately never started Northern Quarter project which bit the dust in 2009 and so, over 15 years on, the site remains a single level open car park.