Though Consortium Developments was unable to get a single one of its proposed new towns off the ground, development is well under way on Chafford Hundred, the new town of 5,000 homes and associated commercial and community buildings now being built on 575 acres of former chalk quarries at Grays Thurrock, Essex, 18 miles east of London.
Undertaken by a joint venture of Blue Circle Properties (50%), the Rosehaugh subsidiary Pelham Homes (40%) and the newspapers-to-leisure group Pearson (10%), Chafford Hundred is one of Britain’s largest private-enterprise new towns. For comparison, the innovative village of New Ash Green in Kent, which Bovis acquired from the administrators of the Span group in 1970, has only 2,000 homes on its 430 acres.
But Bradley Stoke, begun in 1986 by a consortium of Ideal Homes, Beazer, Tarmac, Costain, Prowting and Taylor Woodrow, will eventually have 8,500 homes on its 1,000-acre site on the outskirts of Bristol, making it the largest privately funded new town in Europe.
Dismissed by some architectural critics as Noddy-type housing estates, these private-enterprise new towns represent the real housing aspirations of ordinary people far more closely than the plans of some architects who insist that they know what is best for other people. One has only to consider the more inhuman post-war council housing estates, and some of the disastrous mistakes perpetrated in the otherwise exemplary New Towns programme, to realise how damaging social engineering can be.
Chafford Hundred owes its conception to Tony Every-Brown FRICS FSVA, Blue Circle’s former property development director (and now its property consultant), who spent four years negotiating with planners at Thurrock Borough Council and Essex County Council to win approval for the master plan by the Barton Willmore Partnership at the end of 1987.
Blue Circle has 33,000 acres of land in the UK of which 22,000 acres surplus to processing and manufacturing needs are gradually being brought forward for regeneration by Blue Circle Properties (whose profits of £11.6m in 1991 were down from the £15.3m made in 1990). Much of this land is in its gravel-working and chalk-quarrying fiefdoms in south-west Essex and north-west Kent, on either side of the new Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, but there is also land in the West Midlands (where Alpha Park and Bishop’s Hill are being developed), Humberside (at Hessle, next to the bridge), Suffolk, Cambridge and Derby.
A master plan has been prepared by Vincent Gorbing & Partners for the development of some 12,000 acres of Blue Circle’s land between Dartford in the west, Northfleet in the east, the A2/m2 in the south and the River Thames in the north. The first fruits of this are the 300-acre Crossways Business Park next to the new bridge at Dartford (designed by Colwyn Foulkes & Partners), and the 300-acre Bluewater regional shopping centre (designed by Fitch Benoy).
Further east, Blue Circle has its Medway Valley business park near Rochester, and its Eurolink business park at Sittingbourne, both in the course of development.
Chafford Hundred is Blue Circle’s first major development north of the Thames, close to the new river crossing and also adjacent to Capital & Counties’ Lakeside shopping centre. Once one of the most environmentally deprived areas in England, Thurrock is undergoing a long-overdue renaissance. Even before the new bridge opened on October 30 last year, major developers such as Ideal Homes, Laing, Bovis, Fairview, McLaughlin & Harvey and Blue Circle’s own residential development subsidiary, Saxon Homes, were building in and around Grays.
But Chafford Hundred is far more than just another collection of new housing estates, even though the development consortium has sold land to 10 other residential developers. For a start, it will have its own local shopping scheme, the Armada Centre, in addition to having direct access to Lakeside, which is the largest out-of-town retail project in the South East. Even before the Armada Centre is built, a Safeway superstore will open in Chafford Hundred next year.
The Sand Martin, a public house developed by Greene King, opens next month, and the first of two community centres planned for Chafford Hundred will open in the autumn, as will the first of three county primary schools. Later, a county secondary school will be built, and there are plans for a multi-denominational church, church hall and a church primary school. A country park is at the final design stage, making use of more than 250 acres of the site, which will also include wildlife sanctuaries in such dramatic features as Warren Gorge and Lion Gorge (giving the lie to suggestions that Essex is flat and featureless), lakes and woods.
British Rail plans a new station here on the Grays-Upminster Line, enabling Fenchurch Street to be reached in less than half an hour. The new road under the railway line to the Lakeside regional shopping centre and the A13(T) to Tilbury will also bring junction 30/31 of the M25 within five minutes’ drive.
Next to the proposed station will be Roebuck Commercial Park, where serviced sites for offices and industrial buildings now being offered through Kemsley Whiteley & Ferris, Clive Lewis & Partners and M D Cahill & Partners.
Since construction began in March 1988 more than 540 houses have been built and sold at Chafford Hundred, despite the recession (though prices have fallen by 10% to 15%). Prices are currently from £37,995 for studio flats, £42,995 for one-bedroom flats, £49,995 for one-bedroom houses, £56,000 for two-bedroom flats and £59,995 for two-bedroom houses. Three-bedroom houses are on offer from £76,995 to £90,000, and four-bedroom houses from £97,500 to £105,000.
J S Bloor has completed its development of 100 houses and flats at Tudor Heights and Tudor Court; and D L & P Luck has completed 35 houses at Ghyll View, but has bought more land. Admiral Homes has nearly completed 99 energy-saving houses and flats at the Anchorage; McLean is developing 62 detached houses at the Limes, arranged in a series of culs-de-sac, and Tilbury Homes is building 77 flats and houses at Howard Chase, also arranged in culs-de-sac.
Wimpey is developing 78 flats and houses at Buckland Place, while Tarmac has constructed 45 houses at Kensington Gardens and has just bought two more parcels of land; but Laing, which has been building on two sites, has temporarily closed its site office because of poor sales.
The Chafford Hundred development consortium itself is building 116 terraced and detached houses at Elizabeth Gate and 104 houses and flats at Seymour Gate.
If there is one criticism of Chafford Hundred, it is that most of the buildings are the developers’ standard house types, but at least the cows in the surrounding fields are real ones, not concrete as at Milton Keynes.
