Great Notley Garden Village

Coordinates: 51°51′34″N 0°32′03″E / 51.8595°N 0.5341°E / 51.8595; 0.5341

Great Notley Garden Village
Great Notley Garden Village  Great Notley Garden Village shown within Essex
Population	5,500
OS grid reference	TL740207
Parish	Great Notley
District	Braintree
Shire county	Essex
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BRAINTREE
Postcode district	CM7, CM77
Dialling code	01376
Police	Essex
Fire	Essex
Ambulance	East of England
EU Parliament	East of England
UK Parliament	Braintree
List of places: UK • England • Essex

Great Notley Garden Village, or simply Great Notley is a suburban development, mostly by Countryside Properties on the fringe of Braintree, Essex in England with an approximate population of 5,500. It became an independent civil parish on 1 April 2000 as a result of The Great Notley Parish Council Order 2000.

Archeology

Excavations in Great Notley revealed the remains of Iron Age and Roman settlements with a series of enclosures overlaid with a Roman development on the site of the Skyline Business Park, where it is thought that there was a series of occupations on the site from the late Iron Age onwards, which included brewing, farming and the production of textiles.^[1]

Design concept

Great Notley was designed a self-sustainable garden village composed of three distinct hamlets linked via a spine road^[2]:

• Notley Green hamlet, to the South
• Oaklands Manor hamlet, centred around a new manor house
• Panners Farm hamlet, to the North

It is cited as an example of Countryside Properties's design philosophy of 'instant maturity' and 'instant community'.^[3]

Also within the overall 188 ha (460 acres) site is a business park, 'Skyline120', and a 40 ha (100 acres) country park.

Amenities

Bird Sculpture above Great Notley Country Park

Due to the size of Great Notley, there is little in the way of indoor entertainment facilities. Outdoor entertainment includes various playgrounds and the aforementioned country park (known as the 'Discovery Centre'), which has recently^[when?] undergone construction work to include an assault course, café and water features.

There are various small businesses operating in Great Notley, including a veterinary centre, public house, estate agents and a tanning salon. There is also a Tesco supermarket located in the garden village, making it the third Tesco to be built within the Braintree district.

Schools

There are two schools in Great Notley; White Court Primary School and Notley Green Primary School, which was opened in 1999. The main secondary school for the area is Notley High School, which is located in the neighbouring village of Black Notley.

Awards

As a development it has won numerous awards for the sensitivity of the architecture, including the Braintree Environmental Heritage Award,^[4] Environmental Initiative Award for 'The Discovery Centre',^[4] Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Award,^[4] Best Kept Village in Essex as part of the 1998 National Village of the Year awards,^[4] and two gold What House? awards.^[4] It is now listed as a 'Best Practice' example by SEEDA for incorporating natural habitats in modern housing development.^[5]

Despite such accolades, it has had its detractors,^[3] most notably Alain de Botton who found the replication of 17th, 18th and 19th century styles of housing to be unadventurous, featuring the village extensively in the television series The Perfect Home.^[6] de Botton's criticism of the mock historical styles was not accepted by Countryside Properties' Chris Cook who deadened De Botton's 'abstruse aesthetic objections'.^[7]

References

1. ^ Jarvis, Joanne (January 2009). "Braintree is reborn". Essex Life (Archant). 
2. ^ Countryside Properties (2007-02-09). "Case Study - Great Notley Garden Village, Braintree". http://www.countryside-properties.com/news/case-studies/10376. Retrieved 2007-05-13. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Daisy Froud, Countryside Properties and the Shape of Time, University of London, 2002. Reprinted in Home Cultures Journal, 2004. Illustrated academic review.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Countryside Properties - Awards". http://www.countryside-properties.com/group-profile/awards.aspx?SiteTools_ADDL=All. Retrieved 2007-05-13. 
5. ^ "Building for Nature". Winter 2002. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928103921/http://www.seeda.co.uk/publications/docs/BUILDING-FOR-NATURE-Winter-2002.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-13. 
6. ^ "We Need More Adventurous Architecture". http://www.channel4.com/4homes/magazine/august_06/botton_architecture_2.html. Retrieved 2007-05-12. 
7. ^ Peter Conchie (May 2, 2006). "Reviews: Semi-detached from ordinary people". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2007-05-21. http://web.archive.org/web/20070521194359/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060502/ai_n16214703. Retrieved 2007-05-13.