A private school’s former boarding houses in Dulwich could be turned into nine homes.
Dulwich Prep stopped using the accommodation in West Dulwich in 2018 due to a drop in pupils opting to board at the £23,385 per year all boys’ school.
The building has since been returned to the Dulwich Estate, a charity which owns 1,500 acres of land around Dulwich – an area larger than 1,130 football pitches.
The Dulwich Estate has now revealed plans to turn the Grade-II listed Brightlands Boarding House into seven flats and build two new homes on the site. Of the flats, four would be one-bedroom, two would be two-bed and one would be three-bed. Both of the new semi-detached homes would have three bedrooms. All the homes would be for private sale.
The boarding house on Gallery Road was originally constructed as a schoolhouse in the 1800s.
It was acquired by the headmaster of Dulwich College Preparatory School during the Second World War to house 200 boys, after their boarding house was destroyed in bombing.
After Brightlands stopped being used as accommodation in 2018, Dulwich College re-purposed the building to provide support services to pupils and staff. But by 2020, the school no longer had any need for the boarding house.
If the redevelopment plans are approved by Southwark Council, the new homes will go towards the council’s target of 2,355 homes being built every year in the borough, which the council has recently fallen short of.
Planning documents submitted to the council on behalf of the Dulwich Estate read: “This application looks to provide much-needed housing, as supported by national, regional and local policy, and of particular benefit in terms of securing the sustainable and meaningful future use of an important, statutorily listed heritage asset.
“As well as the delivery of new homes in a sustainable location and on brownfield land, of specific note are the benefits achieved through uplifts in urban greening proposed, making excellent use of an area of hard standing previously dedicated to parking. This is evidenced in the ecological and arboricultural reports submitted with this application.
“Overall, the development achieves significant benefits and is of high-quality design, and as such should be supported by officers.”
The council will make a decision on the application at a later date.