A stepping-stone between town and country living

Wintringham is a sustainable urban extension on a 162-hectare site on the edge of St Neots, 18 miles west of Cambridge, and which forms a part of the St Neots Eastern Expansion area. JTP is leading a design team headed up by masterdeveloper Urban&Civic to create a new mixed-use neighbourhood of 2,800 homes and extensive community infrastructure.

New homes range in size from apartments to five-bedroom family homes. It will also include extensive commercial uses including space for creative industries, extensive employment space, two primary schools, community facilities including shops and a health centre, and new landscaped access points to create a sense of arrival into the neighbourhood.

The community facilities are focused around a civic square in the north-west of the site, to provide maximum accessibility to residents in neighbouring areas, and in close proximity to St Neots train station with journeys to London in under an hour. The first phase of delivery will include a primary school for both new and existing residents to help relieve the strain on nearby overcrowded schools.

The proposals draw the existing features of the surrounding natural landscape into the site. A linear park connecting the different areas of the expansion forms the spine of Wintringham, and one of the two brooks that span the width of the neighbourhood reconnects with an existing brook, creating a new leisure route and footpath from Wintringham to St Neots town centre.

Investment in early landscape improvements and habitat creation across the site, initially along the northern corridor on Cambridge Road includes the planting of over 2,400 trees to ensure Wintringham is set within a properly-managed green environment.

As well as creating the masterplan for the site, JTP also produced a Design Code for Key Phase 1 and 2, which sets out specific guidelines to safeguard the quality of the proposals as the project progresses to implementation. The Design Code for Key Phase 1 will deliver 1,500 new homes, the first primary school and a District Centre which includes a mixture of commercial, residential and community spaces.