Ashmount Primary School
Ashmount Road, London, N19 3BH Tel: 020 7272 7145 email: office@ashmount.islington.sch.uk
School Move
Consultation and Design
When the project to move Ashmount School and renew Crouch Hill Community Park was first proposed, extensive consultations were carried out among parents and carers of the school and other residents at Ashmount’s current site and at Crouch Hill. These consultations showed overwhelmingly strong support for the proposals. Two-thirds of those who responded to the questionnaire said they were in favour - and, of those residents who were also parents at the school, 90% said they were in favour. The detailed report is here.
To read one of the consultation documents from January 2007 – which contains more information about the options described on previous pages, as well as details of public meetings held to inform and consult local residents – click here.
Islington Council then appointed architects Penoyre & Prasad who embarked on a lengthy and consultative design process, which included discussions with Ashmount’s staff and children, as well as with Bowlers, CAPE and Greenspace (who look after the parkland at Crouch Hill).
Penoyre & Prasad’s completed design takes account of all the views and requirements of the site’s current and prospective users, including the need to safeguard the natural environment. It does not increase the footprint of the buildings that already exist on the Crouch Hill site, so that no green space is lost. And the carbon-neutral design allows heat to be exported from the site to adjoining accommodation on Warltersville Road. This is a huge contrast with Ashmount’s current glass-clad building, which is costly to heat in both environmental and financial terms (making it, in fact, the most expensive school of its size to heat in London). For more details of the heating system to be used at the Crouch Hill Site, which will also generate all the school's electricity, click here.
To read an article in the Architects' Journal about the sensitive and sustainable design for Crouch Hill, click here - and here to see an annotated version of Penoyre & Prasad's illustration at the top of this page, showing the new Ashmount School and Bowlers Nursery in the foreground, and the CAPE building and Ecology Centre in the background, amid the wonderful greenery of the Crouch Hill site.
An email mailing list concerning the redevelopment of the Crouch Hill site has been set up, which parents, friends and members of the community are invited to join by sending an email to CrouchHill-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
