Heritage Trail

Brooklands College and Cala Homes would like to thank the local residents who joined us last week for the trail around the College woodland. We would also like to thank the Weybridge Society for helping to publicise the event in the community.

Over 50 residents joined us for the morning which involved a guided tour led by Joe Gerrard, from Define, who is leading the landscape planning for the site.

Included within the plans to redevelop the College site are:

• Opening up 12 hectares of woodland which includes a newly accessible ‘Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace’ (SANG) for Elmbridge, open to the local community.
• Improving the management of the green space to enhance and diversify local habitats and ecology – the proposals deliver a 14.2% biodiversity habitats net gain.
• Extending the Discovery Trail through the site linking Brooklands Mansion to Brooklands Museum, providing walking and cycling links across the site and utilising the pair of bridges that cross the railway line. This introduces a new strategic north-south link between Weybridge town centre and Brooklands Museum, via the historic College grounds.
• Renewing the site’s significant listed mansion building, returning it to its historic residential use and securing its maintenance and upkeep for the future. We will reintroduce the Mansion’s landscaped and terraced gardens as well as securing the long term future of the Obelisk within the Woodland.

A big thank you to all those who attended our heritage trail day, it was a privilege to share our plans with the local community. Brooklands has an extraordinary heritage, and we are very excited that our plans will enable our community to have public access to this woodland area.

Christine Ricketts, Principal at Brooklands College

More information about the plans to redevelop Brooklands College are available at www.brooklandsgrove.co.uk.