The Avenue
This development, on part of The Friends’ School site in Saffron Walden, is for 76 new homes ranging from one-bedroom flats to five-bedroom detached houses. It includes 25% affordable housing and 18 flats and small houses specifically designed for the over-55 market.
The school selected Hill Residential and PTE through a competitive process in 2008 to deliver a viable residential development to fund a new junior school and improvements to the existing main school building. The scheme responds sensitively to its mature landscaped context, within a Conservation Area and adjacent to a listed water tower. It creates a series of character areas which reflect the pattern and character of the neighbouring townscape and also maintains and enhances the intrinsic qualities of the site.
The heart of the scheme is a retained avenue of mature lime trees, The Avenue. The homes here are arranged around courtyards behind a new garden wall, or are set back beyond grassed and planted verges. The new landscaping includes relocated native hedgerows, planted fruit trees from existing rootstock on the site, and retention of most of the mature trees.
The development won a Housing Design Project Award in 2011 which recognises outstanding architecture and innovative building design. On presenting the award the Director General for Housing and Planning at the Department for Communities commented: ‘The design of The Avenue uses the existing context to brilliant effect. This is exactly the kind of scheme that challenges identikit houses by showing how to do something more contextual.’
