Aurora Chaldon School, Surrey

Adapting a former care home for award-winning SEND provision

Background

We worked with award-winning SEN education network The Aurora Group to adapt, extend and retrofit a former nursing home to provide a nature-rich alternative to mainstream education for young people with learning difficulties.

Originally constructed in around 1908, the Arts & Crafts stately home in Bletchingley, Surrey, was used as a Red Cross convalescent hospital during the First World War before reverting to a dwelling house in the 1920s. In the 1980s, it was converted to a care home that was later extended in numerous ways before closing its doors in 2017. The site had been vacant for a further six years before works commenced on the school. By then it was sufficiently dilapidated to inspire local urban explorers to post YouTube videos.

Client:
The Aurora Group
Team
Archway Building Consultancy and NCL Contractors
Status
Completed
Approach

Drawing on research from the Sensory Trust, we followed best-practice education design principles. Our approach balanced the needs of all-weather play, vehicle movements, clarity of circulation and well-proportioned classroom spaces to deliver a high-quality learning environment.

We reorganised the landscape to create a generous arrival, introducing a through-road and opening up the forecourt to reveal the splendour of the original house. This involved navigating tree protection orders and the challenges of working around a mature and verdant environment in the Green Belt.

We stripped off low-quality and superfluous building additions, upgraded external fabric and introduced an elegant brick extension to host a new commercial kitchen. Elsewhere, we retained better-quality building stock, making thermal upgrades and dressing it with new Thermowood weatherboard cladding.

To ensure the school offers an appropriate curriculum for all, we provided further specialist classrooms in a pair of timber Net-Zero outbuildings: crisp, single-storey volumes clad in Thermowood and topped with thriving green roofs. These classrooms are connected to the main building via a timber colonnaded walkway that runs along the rear, offering a transitional space between school and gardens.

Outcome

Aurora Chaldon is a welcoming SEN school in a beautiful, mature landscape in the Green Belt. The modern extension seamlessly integrates with the original house with matching roof pitch and external finishes.

Internally, spaces support the varied needs and aspirations of each individual who attends the school, with provision available for everything from occupational therapy to A-level science. External spaces and play equipment support exercise and regulation as well as learning.

Aurora Chaldon students now benefit from personalised education, care and support plans in a learning environment that feels comfortable, homely and in no way institutional.

My interactions with e-gg’s design team, on various projects, have been nothing but positive on all fronts. Specifically, e-gg have been super responsive to operational needs and required changes. They have a great understanding of the sector and operational quirks with our high-acuity cohorts.

The Aurora Group