St Bede's Boarding Houses: Building Begins Soon

Work is due to start on the New Boarding houses on Monday 5 July. Initially this will be site clearance and preparation but, once Park Mead school has broken up for the summer, work on the new entrance to the car park will begin.

The new houses are planned to provide 136 student beds, and will replace accommodation in the chalets of Stud house, in Camberlot Hall and part of Dorms House. They represent a major improvement in the quality of boys’ accommodation, not an increase in boarding or school numbers.

The houses were designed to improve the appearance of the approach to the village when viewed from Michelham Priory Road. The design is environmentally sensitive with solar panels to provide the bulk of the hot water needed and ground source heat pumps to provide the entire heating requirement except on the very coldest of winter days.

The two sides of the Stud Yard which will disappear have, on occasions, been used as a maternity roost by bats. Great care has been taken to ensure that they are not used at present and the remaining side of the yard has been made more bat friendly, with the addition of bat access holes and Hessian lining to the roof space to provide better roosting conditions , all under the watchful eye of nature conservation experts.

Once all is finished in around 15 months time, Stud house boys will move to one of the new houses and the girls of Crossways to the other. The boys of Camberlot will then occupy what is at present the Crossways accommodation, next to the girls of Dorter house.