ST HELEN’S ESTATES MASTERPLAN
St Helen’s Estates Masterplan
Introduction
Introduction Page 2 The New Junior School Little St Helen’s Playground
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The School House Project
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School Operations and Car Parking During Developments
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When Dr Short launched her Vision for the School in the spring of 2014, she emphasised how lucky we are to have such a wonderful 21-acre greenfield site in the middle of Northwood, and that she was determined to make the best of the estate in support of her wider Vision. Since then, and with the help of our architects, we have worked hard to develop our Masterplan for the estate built around the plans for the new Junior School. The Masterplan is now ready to be put into its first stage of operation, and – as we hope you are already aware – the School is about to embark upon the largest development of its estate in over a decade. Unsurprisingly, given the nature and age of some of our buildings, there are many potential improvements to the School site that might be considered. It is not possible to contemplate such a wide range of developments without some sense of our priorities and, in concert with Dr Short’s Vision, these have been defined as follows: •
Facilities for teaching and learning
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Facilities for co-curricular provision
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Facilities to enhance the general operation of the School
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Enhancements to the general fabric and presentation of the School
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In developing the Masterplan, a number of other factors have been considered including resources, sequencing and potential disruption to the operation of the School. We have also been extremely aware of the surrounding community and our privileged position in the Northwood-Frithwood Conservation Area. The Masterplan has therefore also involved consultation with the Planning Department in Hillingdon, the Northwood Residents’ Association and our neighbours.
Science, Music and Computer Science would all benefit from improved facilities or greater space, and the vacation of the Lund Building by Junior School provides opportunities here. Our plans for Longworthe and Gwyer are still developing, but both buildings may have a role to play in our desire to expand our provision for extended day care to help cater for the increasingly busy lives of some of our parents.
The Masterplan is intended to be an evolving plan, able to adapt to changing circumstances and needs of the School in the years ahead. For now, it provides a framework within which individual projects can be planned and delivered in a way that maintains the coherence of our estate and which cherishes everything that we love about it for future generations. The first stage of the Masterplan contains the following projects:
There is enough work in the follow-on projects to last 10 years or more, and the pace of work will depend on many factors. Funding plans for these projects have not yet been established but it is hoped and anticipated that the new Development Office will have a role to play in the future. The pace of development will also need to be carefully considered; we do not wish a girl’s journey through the School to have been one of perpetual building and development! However, the Masterplan gives a tangible strand to the School’s Vision and we hope you will be as excited as we are as we see these developments come to fruition in the years ahead.
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The construction of a new Junior School
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The construction of a new playground for Little St Helen’s
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The reorganisation and development of School House
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The creation of the Futures Centre
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The installation of an all-weather sports pitch
The planning for these projects has already commenced and the physical works for some of them will start this summer. It is hoped that the first stage works will be completed by the end of 2017, and more detail on these projects is included later in this update. Our funding plans for the first stage projects are already in place; between our existing Development Funds and our anticipated income over the next 3 years, there should be no need to either borrow any money or to raise fees unnecessarily. Beyond the initial stage of the Masterplan, there are a number of additional projects that the School believes are necessary or desirable. Principal amongst these is the need to renovate and relocate the Main School Library in order to bring it into the heart of the School and to update it to provide greater access to modern research techniques and resources. The changing facilities for the girls also lack cohesion and are often poorly located, and it is hoped that an extension to the Sports Centre will enable us to rationalise this and, perhaps, reintroduce a squash court to the School. Importantly, the relocation of School House changing rooms offers the space we need to bring the Library down from its eyrie and into the centre of the School’s life.
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The New Junior School
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The new Junior School will be the largest single development the School has undertaken in over ten years, marking the first step in delivering the infrastructure needed to support the School’s Vision. After thorough consultation with the local community and the local planning authorities, we were delighted when Hillingdon granted planning permission for the new Junior School in October 2014. Construction is due to start as soon as term ends this July and will take a full year to complete. Although there will be some disruption to the heart of the School site during the construction phase, the operation of the School will be unaffected and the existing Junior School will continue to operate as normal throughout the build.
The new building will, for the first time, bring all the disparate elements of the Junior School under one roof. Year groups will enjoy permanent classroom locations with light and airy rooms to encourage exceptional learning. We have made extensive provision for specialist teaching in Music, Art, D&T, Science and Drama. The Main Hall will provide for PE, assemblies and productions and, following the successful example of The Centre, will also benefit from retractable seating with enough seats for the whole of Junior School. We have been very aware of the need to design the new building both to be sympathetic with the existing site and to maximise the greener aspects of the project. The single storey arms of the School will grow out of the contours of the estate and will be covered with vibrant living green roofs. Due to open in September 2016, this state-of-the art building will provide a significantly enhanced age-appropriate environment and improved opportunities for learning. The development will not be accompanied by any expansion in pupil numbers across the School, and will be carried out in full consideration of preserving the character of the site, recognising our unique position in the heart of Northwood.
As well as designing the building to be as energy efficient as possible, we have also taken the opportunity to install photovoltaic (PV) cells on the main 2-storey roof. The energy generated by these solar panels will pay for themselves within 10 years and will, thereafter, contribute to energy savings across the School.
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The works to the new Junior School also offer the opportunity to improve the layout of the School’s car parking and security arrangements. A new dedicated drop-off zone will be created for Junior School, along with a safe and secure coach park which no longer shares space with other vehicles. The Central Car Park will be reconfigured to a safer and more efficient layout, although the one-way system through the heart of the School will no longer be used. More details on the car-parking arrangements during the construction phase of the project are included at the end of this update. The Junior School project marks a significant step towards the School’s Vision; it will provide a wonderful learning environment for our equally wonderful girls in the Junior School, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of a School designed entirely with their needs in mind. Their fabulous facilities will also be available to the wider School and, in particular, the proximity to Little St Helen’s will facilitate much smoother transitions between Little St Helen’s and the Junior School. The Senior School will further benefit from being able to utilise the vacated space in Claremont, Mackenzie and Lund, and planning for this has already started. We are eagerly awaiting the start of this exciting project in July and we look forward to welcoming girls, parents and staff through its doors in September 2016.
Little St Helen’s Playground
The playground will be centred around an exciting pirate ship to allow imaginations to run free and the girls to scramble, climb and slide in safety. The pirate ship will be set on a soft safety surface and surrounded by an age-appropriate trim trail with balance beams, wobbly bridges and steps.
The very first step to enable the construction of the new Junior School is a project to create a new playground for Little St Helen’s on the land between Little Gables and Gables. This will replace the existing Little Gables playground (which needs to move to make way for the new Junior School) and will provide a fantastic new outdoor play and learning environment for the youngest girls. It will be located on the land between Gables and Little Gables, providing greater cohesion between those two buildings.
The playground will enjoy other features such as tunnels, and an area where the girls will be able to channel and learn about water, as well as plenty of space to run and explore. Linked to the installation of the new playground, we are also taking the opportunity to improve the security arrangements between Gables and Little Gables. This will see the construction of a new perimeter fence line with a safe and lit footpath to connect the two buildings. Parents will no longer have to go down to Green Lane and risk the puddles and narrow pavements to move between the two buildings!
The new playground will encourage outdoor learning, improve co-ordination and balance, and will enable our girls to grow in confidence. The playground has been designed to the highest standards and will be built with the safety of the girls foremost in mind.
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The School House Project
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St Helen’s has been on its present site for over 100 years and has developed beyond recognition from its earliest days on the corner of Eastbury and Carew Roads – even “Old Hall” was not part of the original School! As the School has grown, it has expanded its existing buildings, built new ones and acquired others but, with the greatest respect to our forebears, this was not always planned in a cohesive way. To be fair, there was no way that such radical changes to the School, society or technology could have been anticipated, but the original School House and its latter-day additions do not best serve the School’s needs today. Within the Masterplan it has long been clear that School House needs to be updated and developed to bring more coherence to the teaching and administrative sections within the Senior School. Sixth Form girls, in particular, are taught in a variety of small classrooms, and the links and accessibility throughout the building are poor. The main entrance to the School is on Eastbury Road, but you would be forgiven for not realising it! The redevelopment of School House therefore also offered the opportunity to support the outward facing strands of the Headmistress’s Vision by creating a new Main Entrance which will enhance access to the School and our presence within Northwood. However, whilst planning the project, we have been absolutely adamant that any redevelopment of the oldest parts of the School must be done in a way that is sympathetic to the character and history that we value so much.
We intend to create a series of new classrooms and tutorial rooms (including one immediately above the new entrance) that will be more coherently aligned with the other teaching areas in School House. This will enable us to reorganise the teaching spaces currently known as the ‘S’ rooms to provide new staff working areas to allow our staff to work more efficiently and effectively than they do in their current locations. Importantly, we will then bring the Headmistress more into the heart of the School with a new office overlooking the June Leader Building and the Bursary Lawn. Circulation and access will also be improved with a new Reception area and School Office in what is now the Old Hall, leading to a fantastically renovated Quad area with enclosed ‘cloisters’. New stairs and lifts will enable improved disabled accessibility. The main elements of the work will start on School House in September 2015, with some enabling works taking place earlier, and will take about nine months to complete. Although this overlaps with the building of the Junior School, the School and Governors felt that it was better to confine any disruption to the site to a narrower period of time and to do so sooner rather than later. Delaying the project would have had implications for the other projects within the Masterplan, and the School wished to preserve its options in this regard. There will be a few final internal moves and reorganisations in summer 2016. Finally, the School House project will facilitate a further, much smaller, project to renovate the main Dining Room where we will utilise capital investment from our caterers, Holroyd Howe, to update our dining facilities significantly. This project will take place over summer 2016 without any additional disruption to the School operations.
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School Operations During Developments
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As might be expected, it will not be possible to undertake the planned improvements to the School without some disruption, but every effort will be made to keep this to an absolute minimum. We will obviously use the holiday periods as much as possible and will ensure that, as far as possible, construction activities avoid critical periods, such as examinations.
We will prioritise what parking we have for the youngest girls in Little Gables and for our coach services. Parents of girls in Little Gables will be given specific parking permits, but there will be no parking in the Central Car Park for any other parents. A drop-off system will operate in the mornings only, but parents will not be allowed to leave their cars in this area.
There will, however, be some day-to-day impact on access to the School site during the construction works, particularly from the new Junior School. The location of the site will mean that we lose much of the existing Central Car Park and the access through the site from Green Lane to Carew Road. Car parking will become exceedingly limited on the School site and this will mean that, from September 2015 to July 2016, we will have to impose restrictions the use of the Central Car Park. Access to the visitors’ car park on Eastbury Road will also be reduced.
We would therefore encourage all parents to consider alternative travel plans and arrangements for the next academic year. Our Coach services will run as normal and we will expand the routes (including additional routes) as the need arises. Although construction traffic will be instructed to avoid peak times, the local roads and residential parking are expected to be very busy, and parents may wish to consider parking further away from the School and walking the last part of their journey. Public transport, especially the Tube, will also be worth considering further.
We thought that it would be helpful if we outlined the alternative parking available to you in the Northwood area. Green Lane Car Park is situated only 5 minutes’ walk from the School, and is free for a stay of up to thirty minutes and after 6.30pm. In effect, if you park after 6pm you will be able to park for free. Please remember to acquire a free ticket from the Pay & Display machine if you arrive between 6pm and 6.30pm to cover your stay until parking becomes unrestricted. If you park before 6pm, you will need to purchase a ticket to cover your stay until the charging period ends at 6.30pm.
The School will continue to function as normal during the works; safe routes will be created around the School so that the girls can continue to access the Sports Centre and other facilities. Junior School girls will continue to be taught in their current buildings without any disruption to teaching or learning. The proximity of the building works to Little Gables cannot be avoided, but secure solid hoardings will be used to separate the working area from Little Gables and their new playground will be completed before September to enable girls to play safely away from the construction site. We will, of course, aim to satisfy the inevitable curiosity of the girls by arranging talks by the contractors and visits to the working site when it is safe to do so. In School House, the decision has been taken to minimise the disruption to the Sixth Form Girls by providing purpose-built temporary accommodation in the Quad. This solution will continue to offer a high quality and civilised learning environment while the School House works are taking place.Visitors will need to use our temporary Reception area, but they will be assured of our customary warm welcome.
The same parking charges and timings apply to on-street parking in the “Pay and Display” zones, on Eastbury Road for example. Parking is less restricted on Carew Road and other surrounding streets. Please check the on-street signs carefully for details of where and when parking restrictions apply. We would also take the opportunity to remind you that the roads around the School are very likely to be congested, and request that you are mindful of local residents when you are parking in order to attend events at St Helen’s, especially in the evenings. In particular, we would be most grateful if you could refrain from obstructing the driveways of our Northwood neighbours.
Given the length of time since the School last carried out significant construction works (the building of the Sports Centre over 10 years ago), we appreciate that many of our parents and girls will not have experienced such works before. We will be doing everything we can to ensure that we address both safety and operational aspects of the work and to communicate as much as possible about any disruption or changes to routines that may need to take place. We are confident that any temporary disruption will be well worth it, and we hope that it will rapidly fade from memory as we enjoy the fantastic new buildings and facilities for many years to come.
Mark Mackenzie Crooks Business Director
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St Helen’s School Eastbury Rd, Northwood Middlesex HA6 3AS Tel 01923 843210 Email: enquiries@sthelens.london www.sthelens.london