Waterlooville Shopping Centre Built

1970s

In the 1970s, the old village centre of Waterlooville was demolished and replaced with a modern shopping precinct. Wellington Way was created as a pedestrianised shopping street, and the Waterlooville Shopping Centre was built around it, with car parks, service roads and the inner relief road of Maurepas Way. The development was typical of the town centre redevelopment schemes of the period, replacing Victorian and Edwardian buildings with concrete, glass and brick. The new shopping centre brought chain stores to Waterlooville for the first time and gave the town a commercial centre appropriate to its now substantial population. However, the redevelopment destroyed what remained of the old village character.