Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Your Lib Dem team for Cheadle West & Gatley Learn more
by Lib Dem team on 22 January, 2010
Cheadle’s Abney Hall has been a stately home, featured in an Agatha Christie novel, been a town hall, a language school and an office building. Now its owners, Bruntwood, want it to become an Independent school, and they came along to Thursday’s Cheadle Village Partnership to tell us about it and get some feedback.
So what was the message from Bruntwood?
They were keen to stress that the development protects Abney Hall, that a lot of attention will be paid to avoiding traffic problems, and that users of the park will still be able to walk everywhere they can now. Whether all of that’s achieved we’ll have to judge when the plans come out.
The plan is for an existing independent primary school with around 300 pupils to move into the Court building behind the main hall. As those pupils left the primary school,a similar-sized senior school would grow up in the main hall.
There’s a long way to go (not that long, though – the aim is to open the primary school before the end of 2010). In a straw poll at the Village Partnership meeting, most but not all were positive about the plans, from what we’d heard.
As always with anything that’s likely to come for planning permission, myself and Cllr Paul Porgess (the two councillors present) need to stay neutral and avoid expressing a view for or against.
8 Comments
Hi Iain,
I think two major points are raised here with this proposal (amongst the many other points raised last night!).
The first being the impact on the immediate area of increased traffic. Whilst appreciating approx 85 may work at the new school, one can only presume that would be a possible 85 (cars) parking spaces used – are there enough spaces to accommodate staff and visitors? We already have traffic problems at other schools, particularly Schools Hill.
The other point is the ability of local residents to park and continue walking through Abney park. I seem to recall that the architect last night, when pressed about this issue, did mention the updating of the standard and direction of pathways to encourage people to walk elsewhere – is this the start of some form of policing of where residents will be allowed to walk in the future?
Just a couple of points I found interesting at last night’s presentation. Also, whilst there were a lot of partnership members in favour of this proposal, there were a fair amount of members against and abstaining.
Cheers,
Kath
Iain as you know I was one of the attendees firmly against this. Whilst Abney may not be as old as Bramhall Hall, its interior is if anything ‘richer’ than Bramhall and certainly an eye catching building. So why can’t it be preserved for everyone to enjoy and as a tourist attraction that would bring people and income to Cheadle village. WHilst Bruntwood’s stance on charitable donations sounds admirable, we all know such donations are tax deductable, so why not roll up a few years donation’s and gift Abney back to the people of Stockport?
My chief concerns on this are:
Traffic
Access to the park
Damage to the interior of the hall (private school / senior school actually does NOT fill me with confidence that no damage will occur and who pays for the repairs?)
And mainly the fact that Cheadle will be losing one of its major assets again to another private institution.
I’m not even sure you should be neutral on this, but perhaps reflect what the voting populace would like. How many people know, for example that this change is in the process of taking place?
Perhaps a more widespread curculation / consultation is required?
sorry that should be circulation!
Hi Alan,
I’m keen to let people know this is happening and let everyone have their say – hence this blog post and the email I’ve sent out to several hundred local residents.
Unfortunately, it’s come too late to go into our next leaflet (out any day now), but we’ll put it into the one after that if we can. I’m confident word will get around quickly enough.
Abney Hall has a rich interior with original Morris wallpaper and other features. My experience both as an architect and as a Senior Lecturer in Further and Higher Education teaching Conversion and Adaptation of Buildings is that school use tends to destroy timber and plaster mouldings, wall coverings, stained and painted glass and hand made tiles. The larger number of toilets, installation of teaching aids and surface wiring are usually damaging to listed interiors. I am partly concerned about some of the other issues such as access to the grounds for the public but mostly about the inevitable damage that this sort of change of use causes.
Message to John Sutcliffe.
You can use all the networks cables and phones that are already in there when the previous tennat moved out. There should be big enough holes in the walls to push new cables through between rooms already, so no need to drill new ones!
Admittedly the Toilets will need lowering for pupils, but if you dont mind the toilet floors being wet like we didnt you can leave them as is.
As for Public access, we couldnt stop them with 24hr security, those golf balls didnt half make a mess of the 15th centry stained glass windows and they certainly kept the scrap man in business with all that lead they took!
Abney Hall should be available to all the public..A school will destroy the lovely interior..I love walking around the grounds when i visit the UK…If it is a school-they will not permit strangers/ tourists to get to close and to enjoy the environment…Abney hall belongs to the world–you are custodians only….Vancouver..
Im strongly against this, Abney is one of the main reasons I moved to this area 4 years ago as its a stunning park and should be respected as such. Ive been in touch with the council on another matter of the digger that has left a mass of mess on the side near Roscoes roundabout and I am told this is “new ponds” from some goverment fund. Its a mess and god knows how much thats cost the taxpayer.