Stretham Community Land Trust
A community-led development of 100 new homes, built over four phases.
Community Land Trusts – or CLTs – give ordinary people the means to steward land for local wellbeing; developing and managing homes and other assets important to their local community.
The Stretham Parish Council had recently seen off a hard fought appeal for a new town of 4000 homes on the village doorstep. The process, however, had exposed some hard truths: that the village was losing its soul; the school, pub, local shop were all struggling, and the influx of Cambridge commuters was pricing local out, separating families and pushing key workers further away. New housing was inevitable, so rather than have it done to them, the village decided to do it themselves, and set up a Community Land Trust.
The CLT, acting as the client body, were able to achieve real agency for the village, and define for themselves how their community might grow and evolve with a development of 100 new homes built over four phases. They have been able to create high quality, energy efficient housing around a new village green, including an extension to the cemetery and a new woodland walk along the existing village edge. The process has been a catalyst to galvanise the community, and the affordable housing, managed by the CLT, will provide an asset base to secure economic and social sustainability for the village. The green spaces, water features and hedgerows will add to the biodiversity and environmental sustainability of the surrounding landscape.
The design brief developed through a community engagement process across various events where we were able to work with the local community to trace desire lines, map views, negotiate buffer strips etc, slowly work up a masterplan which feels embedded in the landscape. The appearance of the buildings developed through this shared design process, rooted in a strong desire by the village to create a sense of continuity and connection between the old village and this new rural edge.
This process of land procurement and housing delivery offers an alternative approach for the creation of new housing. This project has had a significant influence upon our own research into the principles of urban design; the realisation that urban growth should not be something abstract and imposed, but rather is an emergent process, integral and intrinsic to its context and setting, and to the lives which give that space its form.
Photos by Richard Fraser
