As a close neighbour to Dashwood, I’ve been glad to see workmen arrive and the redevelopment of the school getting underway. Contractor Mansell is keen to let the community know that it is closely following the plans to preserve the building and repurpose it as houses and flats, and the site manager Vinny Franklin took time yesterday to show me around the site.
Here are some of my photos – look out for more as I find matches for some of them, so we can see how things are changing, or returning to their former glory, as the plans unfold.
The photo of Vinny shows preliminary building work for the new accessible flat that is replacing the old toilet block at the Dashwood Road / Newland Road corner. This will be brick-clad when complete.
I would like to see proposed plans for the site, are they available?
Hi Bren, you can normally see all the available plans on the Cherwell site by visiting http://www.cherwell.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2824 and then clicking on the link ‘view a planning application’, then typing in the reference number 11/00683/F. At this moment, however, the site seems to be down.
This article (http://www.dashwoodarchive.org.uk/new-in-the-archive/redevelopment-moves-forward) gives you some information about the plans. The school building should look very similar after the redevelopment, but there will be some new building on the playground along Newland Road.