Unbuilt design by Drinkwater 1938 Unbuilt design by Drinkwater 1938
In 1938 there was a scheme to widen Silver Street by demolishing Essex Building and straightening out the bend in the street near Erasmus's Tower. This is a pencil drawing by Drinkwater (who had then recently designed Fisher Building) for a smaller building to replace Essex. It was smaller both in height and in length along the river front, because Silver Street was to be widened to the north. In this drawing, the 1460s riverside range can be seen at the left, and the Erasmus Tower of 1449-50 on the extreme right, with the proposed building inbetween, and a new bridge in the foreground.
At that time, Essex Building was in danger of collapsing because its foundations had been eroded by the river Cam, after the main flow of the river had been changed in the 1920s to come round Laundress Green from the new sluices, instead of straight along the river from the mill races. The effect of the water flow needing to be turned from Laundress Green to flow straight down the Backs again was to set up a scouring action along the east bank of the river under Silver Street bridge and Essex Building. This scouring action destroyed the foundations of Essex Building (which began to slip towards the river), and eventually also the foundations of Silver Street bridge, which was replaced in 1959.
The plan to widen Silver Street eventually came to nothing, and the college ended up inserting tie-rods in Essex Building to pull it back up, away from the river, and underpinning the foundations with a concrete shelf under water level. There were plans to sue the authorities responsible for diverting the river, but the Second World War intervened.