About the site

The former scaffolding yard is located in the middle of Ashley Vale. It faces a terrace of red-brick houses in Mina Road and a self-build house in Boiling Wells Lane and backs onto the Narroways conservation area.

The site covers 2.1 acres almost entirely covered by a concrete slab. At the time we bought it, there was an office block on the southern side, a large shed in the middle and several smaller buildings around the edges as shown here.

Before the scaffolding company bought the yard in 1965, the site was used as a mason's yard and firelighter factory. In the nineteenth century, watercress beds had covered the area. This mixture of industrial and rural usage in the history of the site reflects the current mixed-use of the area as a whole, where light-industrial, residential and environment-enhancing activities exist side by side.

More pictures of the site before redevelopment ...

The Ashley Vale Action Group hopes that the development of the site will continue this mixed-usage tradition by including workspace alongside (and within) ecologically-sensitive residential buildings. By facilitating self-build housing, our aim was to promote creative, imaginative and innovative housing design at affordable prices.

(Click on picture for larger version.)