Commendation for best best landscaped development
Square planting
Scalebor Park is unusual in having been built as a private psychiatric hospital in 1902. It was taken over by the NHS in 1948 and closed in 1995. Although its many handsome Edwardian buildings were not listed, except the nurses’ home in West Lodge (which was listed Grade II in 1995), there was a public outcry when a volume homebuilder applied for planning permission to demolish everything on the site and build a typical suburban housing estate.
Bradford City Council (in whose metropolitan area Burley-in-Wharfedale now falls, having previously been in Ilkley) acquired the hospital and made it the subject of a designand-build competition to determine what should be saved and what new housing should be built. The competition was won by Burley Developments, a local company whose offices are in the Township School, a Victorian building in the Burley conservation area.
By this time English Heritage had listed a number of the hospital buildings in January 1998, including the famous clock tower, which has now been restored and converted into six apartments. The city council gave planning consent for 139 new houses and flats to be built in the grounds of the hospital and for the best of the hospital buildings to be restored and converted to apartments.
After groundworks had started on site, Burley Developments sold Scalebor Park to David Wilson Homes in 2000, who built the 139 new houses and flats and restored and converted the listed hospital buildings. In doing so, they created a new formal square, Scalebor Park Square, for which the Bradford architects Waller & Partners were consultants to David Wilson Homes. This won a Building for Life Silver Standard Award from CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
The square has 40 large three-storey houses laid out around a central open space of 2.8 acres as two facing crescents and two terraces. Designed to blend in with the original hospital buildings, the new houses have traditional brick walls, slate roofs, double-hung sash windows, balconies and porches, but they incorporate the latest building technology and materials.
The planting in the central square is simple but bold, with beech hedges enclosing the space and screening the parking bays, and lavender hedges lining the footpaths that cross the site, providing colour and fragrance throughout the summer. Beech and juniper trees give height and scale to the square, and the hard and soft landscaping creates an attractive and distinctive setting for the new homes. Black railings and stone paving sit well with the variegated planting, making the central square the main focal point of the new development
HomeBuilder: DAVID WILSON HOMES LIMITED
Wilson Bowden House, Leicester Road, Ibstock,
Leicestershire LE67 6WB
Tel 01530 260777 Fax 01530 260193
Contact: Zoe Stevenson, Marketing Co-ordinator
Email: zstevenson@dwh.co.uk
Website: www.dwh.co.uk
Architects: WILSON BOWDEN GROUP DEVELOPMENT
(Address as above)
Tel 01530 260777 Fax 01530 265358
Website: www.wilsonbowden.co.uk
