The New Street Arch, which many readers will remember, was situated in New Street just to the south of the entrance to the De Gruchy’s Arcade. The arch provided access to St Paul’s School, built in 1871, which now accommodates the St Paul’s Centre. A little-known aspect of the history of the arch is that it was dismantled in 1938 and reconstructed on a new alignment to enable New Street to be widened. My thanks to Harry Le Feuvre at Jersey Archive for uncovering this background and providing the wonderful historic images shown here.
The arch was demolished in the 1993 to facilitate redevelopment, and the arch was again dismantled and put into store.
In an article in the Jersey Evening Post in 1998, the then Chief Officer John Young reported that the arch had been gifted to the public by the owner of the land and was being stored by Public Services. He said that the Planning Committee wished to explore the opportunity to reconstruct the arch on an appropriate site.
Almost 30 years later, notwithstanding a long-running campaign mounted by Société Jersiaise member Alan Holmes, no solution to this interesting challenge has been found. Following discussion in the Architecture Section, an idea emerged to create a scale model of the arch to facilitate discussion with interested parties about its possible reconstruction. Utilising the expertise within the Section, Chris Rive, and colleague John Holloway, created a scale 3D model of the arch on a 3D printer. This would not have possible without the benefit of a scaled survey drawing of the arch provided by Gallaher Architects as part of their larger bequest some years of historic architectural drawings. The model brings the three-dimensional form of the arch back to life, albeit in a miniature form. The arch has carved decoration on both sides, as can be seen on the drawings, photographs and model.
The model is approximately 21cm wide and 18cm high, and will be of considerable benefit in discussions with any parties who might support the reconstruction of the arch on an appropriate site. Ideally this should have with some connection to its origins in New Street. We’d be delighted if anyone with further information on the arch could get in touch.
Stuart Fell
Chair
Architecture Section
architecture@societe.je
