PLANNING applications for the redevelopment of John Roan School have been submitted, along with proposals to temporarily move hundreds of pupils to a former school in Royal Hill.
The John Roan Lower School in Westcombe Park Road is set to be completely demolished and replaced with a new 7,845 m2 campus. Using a “marketplace” design concept, the redeveloped site will comprise of a main academic block and a dedicated sports block with state of the art facilities and a drama studio.
A new “entrance plaza” will be created for “public safety” and to “minimize disruption along Westcombe Park Road.”
The Grade-II listed Upper School in Maze Hill will be refurbished throughout with the original building “returned to its former glory”. The gymnasium will be converted to a dedicated 6th form facility and new ICT facilities will be added.
Two previously infilled courtyards will be opened up to create new “covered dining, social and break-out areas.”
The project, which already secured funded from the Building Schools for the Future initiative, could begin early next year and take two years to complete.
To enable teaching to carry on throughout the redevelopment, it is also proposed that about 400 year-10 and year-11 students be temporarily “decanted” to the Victorian school building in Royal Hill, Greenwich.
The school is named after its founder, John Roan, who died in the seventeenth century and bequeathed money for the education of the “poor town-bred children of Greenwich”.
The school has had various incarnations at several sites for boys and girls in the borough, before coming together in a new mixed Comprehensive school in the early 1980s.
Controversial plans to move the John Roan School to Greenwich Peninsula were dropped in 2009.
Illustration of the interior of the new Westcombe Park Road site
Illustration of a newly covered courtyard at the refurbished Maze Hill site
Victorian school in Royal Hill where it is proposed that year-10 and year-11 students be relocated to while the John Roan redevelopment takes place.
[…] plans, which Greenwich.co.uk first reported on in August, received the unanimous support of […]