The Capital Development Programme
In the first decade of the 21st century, St Albans School is operating in the most competitive educational market in the country. Fees are high and the parents who pay them have expectations to match, not only in terms of results, but of facilities, too. Meanwhile, local state schools have benefited from a decade of unprecedented public spending on state-of-the-art facilities.
Radical attention is now overdue to the historic and densely developed main campus, on which any changes must be carried our with the utmost sensitivity to the scheduled Ancient monuments and Grade 1 listed buildings that are its crowning glory. A plan has been drawn up by architect Ptolemy Dean for a coherent redevelopment of the main site that enhances its historic beauty, conserves its ancient buildings and makes the optimum educational use of physical resources. Ptolemy has extensive experience of working with English Heritage, of conservation issues and of the sympathetic development of important historic locations including Westminster School.
On such a restricted site, the various individual projects within the Capital Development Programme are necessarily interlocked, and must be undertaken in a very specific order. The Sports Centre and Swimming Pool will ‘unlock' use of the current Gym to become a Dining Hall, which in turn will allow for the development of the New Hall into a state-of-the-art Performing Arts Centre, and so on.
Rather like the mediaeval metaphor of the Body Politic, a School is a single entity, in which the fitness of the whole is indivisible from the health of the constituent parts. Parents who are initially attracted by playing fields, or a swimming pool, or put off by the lack of them, may turn out to have a musical or mathematical genius for a son. Therefore whatever your own particular area of interest in the School's life, it stands to benefit from the attractiveness of the whole package and, paradoxically, a new sports centre may help to sustain the pre-eminence of the Maths department.
Every penny raised by the St Albans School Foundation towards the programme will bring the ‘vision' of the School illustrated below a step closer.
Proposed Works:
PROJECT 1: A Sports Centre and Swimming Pool in the orchard.
Planning permission is in place for a new teaching facility comprising a sports hall, fitness centre and swimming pool in the Orchard. It is important that the facility is built on the School site, as its use will be timetabled in the normal school periods which would make transport of pupils to an off-site facility, such as Woollams, impossible. The design is unobtrusive and sympathetic, as the building will be partly sunk into the ground, while the roof line over the swimming pool, whose windows face
the School's boundary with the River Ver and Verulamium Park, follows the contours of the sloping ground. It is intended that, once completed, the sports hall, fitness suite and swimming pool will be available out of house for the use of local primary schools and minority groups, including people with a range of disabilities, increasing sports provision in St Albans for these groups.
Estimated cost: £7.5 million Estimated start date: 1-2 years
PROJECT 2: Transformation of the Gym into a new Dining Hall and catering facilities.
The new sports facilities in the Orchard will open the way forward to redevelop the old Gymnasium, which dates from the 1950s. The shell of the Gymnasium will be transformed into a Dining Hall, creating an open, flexible space, designed to ease congestion during the lunchtime rush, and for use by pupils before and after School.
Estimated cost: c.£1.5 million Estimated start date: 3-5 years
PROJECT 3: Creation of a purpose built Performing Arts Centre and auditorium in the New Hall.
The New Hall will be remodelled, refurbished and reequipped to create an auditorium for performing arts which will give the Music Department, whose operations are presently split between School House and the Hall, a coherent base. State-of-the-art tiered, retractable seating and flexible staging will make the centre a valuable asset for performing arts.
Estimated cost: c.£2.5 million Estimated start date: 5-7 yearsPROJECT 5: Re-landscaping of the Upper Yard to restore a suitably prestigious ‘front of house' to the School. Car parking in this area to be sympathetically reduced and moved elsewhere, and lawns and paths laid.
PROJECT 6: A range of new classrooms to be built in one of three possible locations on the site.
PROJECT 7:Conversion of the existing administrative offices in School House to create additional teaching space.
PROJECT 8: Landscaping of Lower Yard, removing car parking and maintenance building to provide a resurfaced upper terrace area. Lavatories removed from the base of the Library Block, possibly to be replaced by new classrooms in the basement.
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