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.
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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