Work is well and truly underway following planning be granted at Easter with some conditions. The conditions were primarily around archaeology, and included a geophysical survey, some exploratory trenches and an archaeologist watching brief on excavations. This watching brief proved fruitful for the archaeologists, as a good amount of pottery fragments were discovered, along with a ditch, and evidence of foundation posts for a dwelling. These are likely to be from the Saxon or Norman period. Fred from Brook Archaeology has been more than happy to involve students from our history club, at all stages, most recently with the cleaning of the artefacts found before they are sent off for cataloguing.

BAM Construction have made excellent progress in the first field, preparing foundations for the temporary classrooms that will be installed soon, creating a new playground area at the back of the curve, and digging an enormous hole… This hole, which would have made a very impressive swimming pool, is actually a holding tank (or attenuation tank) for all the rainwater from across the whole site, which will be channelled into the tank and pumped out in a controlled manner to the natural water course. The hole was filled with load bearing plastic cages, and topped with many, many tonnes of stone and this will effectively form the foundation for the new MUGA pitch. This tank can hold approximately 10.5 million litres of water!

More work has been carried out at the front of the school, creating a roadway in front of reception and around the food pod, ready for a redirection of the one-way drop off and pick up route in September, plus a new curved social area around the back of the Curve.

Now exam season has finished, work has begun on trenches from the front of the site by the house, down the side of the sports hall to redirect the gas, electric and water supplies.

The schedule for the summer holidays is jam packed, and access to much of the site will be restricted with the exception of the exam results days, 15th August for A-levels and 22nd August for GCSEs.

With the help of some film studies students we will be producing a regular video diary of the build progress so watch out for that!

Mr S Shearman
Site Manager
Wrotham School