A garden suburb for the 21^st century

The site at Chilmington Green was identified in Ashford Borough Council’s 2008 Core Strategy as the site for a sustainable urban extension. The masterplan across four phases will provide a major extension to the town of Ashford and transform into a new garden suburb with over 5,000 new homes set within distinctive neighbourhoods around a new district centre and attractive green infrastructure.

The new neighbourhoods will have a unique character and identity defined by their landscape setting and relationship to the wider countryside. The district centre will be the integral heart of the community with focus on commercial, social, employment, and cultural activities. It will be a vibrant, bustling place with a scale and character reminiscent of traditional centres in Kent.

Chilmington Green hamlet, which includes a variety of listed buildings and remnants of a medieval field pattern, is surrounded by an arc of green space with allotments, a cricket green and community orchards to create a green heart for the new community. Alongside this, green corridors, following existing watercourses, will provide formal and informal green space within a short walk of all new homes.

Project Delivery

– Extensive social infrastructure including 5,750 new homes, creation of over 1,000 new jobs, a new secondary school and up to four new primary schools.

– A district centre with a high street, market square, employment space, a supermarket, a community hub, shops, cafés and restaurants.

– A range of dwelling types including social and private flats and houses

– Extensive natural green space, sports and play facilities.

– Unique neighbourhood clusters including Orchard Village in Phase 3 focused along an orchard-lined boulevard and Chilmington Brook in Phase 4 which will be centred along an attractive landscaped water-way.

– Material palette of stone, brick, render and weatherboarding will provide a sense of cohesiveness to the development as a whole, however their predominance, combination and application will be varied to promote placemaking of individual character areas.

– A sustainable transport strategy, Chilmington Green will be connected to Ashford town centre by a network of footpath and cycle routes as well as a high-quality bus service.

– A series of stakeholder workshops and a Community Planning Event attended by the local community developed the vision, design principles and masterplan for the site.