THE ancient city of Winchester has seen many changes over the centuries, but none as big as the £100m Broadway-Friarsgate development that will transform a swathe of the city centre.

Dozens of new shops, hundreds of homes, a bus station, medical centres, bars, restaurants, a multi-storey car park and public squares will replace the dreary parking lots, warehouses, offices, former postal sorting office and old bus station.

In value it is the biggest commercial development in Winchester's history and rivals in size the Brooks Centre in the late 1980s.

But ironically it will reflect how the city was nearly 2,000 years ago. The proposal will recreate several Roman streets that were lost by 20th-century development.

Back will come Lawn Street, Tanner Street, Silver Hill and Busket Lane as thriving thoroughfares instead of the drab service roads and car parks that replaced them.

This seamless marriage of old and new is at the heart of the ambition of developer Thornfield Properties, which wants to create a modern retail development that merges without any sign of the join with the rest of the city.

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