We've started work on a £10m project to transform and rebuild Pusey Lane, a cobbled back street in the historic centre of Oxford, for St John’s College.
We're replacing five, dated 1970s flats and garages with a new, two and three-storey, Passivhaus standard building, which will run the entire length of the western side of Pusey Lane. Designed by Award winning and Oxford based TSH Architects, the sensitively scaled buildings will form an attractive modern mews, whose design responds to the site’s specific opportunities, qualities and constraints.
The new accommodation will provide 33 graduate rooms distributed across five ‘houses’ and eight apartments. Each of the houses and a number of the apartments, will have a front door onto the street, creating an ‘active frontage’, ensuring natural surveillance of the street and significantly improving upon the anonymous blank façades of the existing garages.
Dean Averies, Oxford Director
The project will also involve, the relaying of the road, the addition of a two metre wide shared surface pavement and a planted rain garden – dramatically improving the experience, greening the street and encouraging biodiversity.
Pusey Lane runs parallel to, St John Street, where at Nos 19-21, we're undertaking a sensitive refurbishment of three, late Georgian, Grade II listed buildings, to be used as graduate accommodation for St John’s College.
As Pusey Lane is located within the grounds of the former medieval Beaumont Palace (the Royal Hunting lodge for Henry II), Archaeologists will be carrying out extensive monitoring and investigations during the initial phases of the works.
Ian Stokes, Works Bursar, St John’s College, Oxford
