The Avenue, on part of The Friends’ School site in Saffron Walden, creates 76 new homes tucked around heritage buildings and an avenue of mature lime trees. The residential development helped fund a new junior school and improvements to the main school building. The homes range from one-bedroom flats to five-bedroom detached houses, including 25% affordable housing and 18 flats and small houses specifically designed for the over-55 market. Richard McCarthy, Director General for Housing and Planning at the Department for Communities commented: “Saffron Walden is one of England’s most beautiful market towns and the design of ‘The Avenue’ uses this existing context to brilliant effect. This is exactly the kind of scheme that challenges identikit houses by showing how to do something more contextual.”