St. Joseph's Convent, Monks Kirby Planning Submission, 16 December 2009 Change of use to modernise kitchen and outbuildings of redundant St. Joseph's Convent, Monks Kirby to cater for nursery and pre-school in main buildings. Plan includes Community Shop selling local food grown and made on the premises plus household essentials with a small café area to allow villagers to meet and collect freshly made ready meals or and hot food before/after work. To include teaching facilities for children & adults cookery school. St. Joseph's Convent Description of Proposal 1. Reopen St Joseph's Junior School as a day nursery for 6 months to 5 years, including a kids club for Children before and after normal school hours. Expand in to Classroom 4, Refectory, south garden and west wing of former Boarding school (change of use for these areas). 2. Modernise school kitchen to cater for school, community shop & café. No change of use. 3. Convert redundant playgrounds into car park for staff and visitors. 4. Convert redundant washing room into bakery to bake artisan bread and teach baking. Convert adjacent coal storeroom into bakery storage area with toilet for visitors and staff. 5. Convert pantry into coldroom to meet modern standards for making and storing food. No change of use. 6. Convert redundant clothes drying room into separate kitchen to keep meat preparation separate from vegetarian food and for teaching sausage making and charcuterie. 7. Enclose staircase in washing up room next to kitchen to meet modern hygiene requirements and add fire exit/ service access to old playground. 8. Convert groundsman’s storeroom/Garage 1 and Garage 2 into small Community Shop with café area shared by cookery school for children and adults (Plan 2, p9). Install door/fire exit between Garage 2/Groundsmans store and fit window lights to south facing roof of Groundsmans store as visual. The shop will sell food made on the premises or locally produced plus household essentials from toilet paper to toothpaste. 9. Renovate Refectory for children and visitors and add fire exit/wheelchair access into old playground. 10. Reinstate kitchen garden in walled garden to supply kitchen and cookery school. No change of use. St. Joseph's Convent existing kitchen Clockwise from top left; stairwell of washing up room, drying room, washroom, washroom & coal store exterior Interior of groundsman's storeroom Exterior of outbuildings clockwise from top; front showing position of proposed roof lights over shop space, right garage door, left garage door showing design for glass shop doors behind existing shutters Interior of groundsman's storeroom Interior of groundsman's storeroom showing door and garage doorway Plan of kitchen annex and outbuildings Outbuildings showing St. Joseph's public entrance gate across former playground Outbuildings showing refectory and former playground leading to teacher's car park at rear St Joseph's Convent nursery entrance from gateway off Brockhurst Lane St Joseph's Convent entrance gate off Brockhurst Lane Clockwise from top left; refectory, refectory interior, teacher's car park at rear, view from teacher's car park St Joseph's Convent tradesman's entrance from walled garden and walled garden from gate off Brockhurst Lane St. Joseph’s Convent, Monks Kirby Design & Access Statement St. Joseph’s Convent School dates back to the 1873 when the 8th Earl of Denbigh endowed the Sisters of Mercy with the chapel, school and other buildings. It was a working School with up to 30 boarders until the mid 1990’s when it was the village Junior School and feeder school for Brockhurst School adjacent. St. Joseph’s Convent School overlooks playing fields donated by the Denbigh Estate for the use of children of the village and Brockhurst Lane on the road side. The road side of the Convent is walled off for it’s entire length with large entrance gates to the front playground and a private entrance to the nun’s cells and kitchen through the large walled kitchen garden next to the new Catholic Church. St Joseph’s Junior School closed in 1994 and the pupils merged with Brockhurst School, renamed as The Revel School, and the Convent closed in 2000. For a short intervening period since the Convent was partly occupied by The Pilgrim’s Community but has been unused for over five years. No maintenance has been performed for over 10 years and the Convent has fallen into disrepair. The Convent is shortly to be boarded up by the Diocese to meet insurance requirements. Boarding up may irreparably damage the windows, particularly plastic casements and the arched windows of the Chapel and Sacristy. Aside from exterior damage, there is the risk that boarding up will encourage vandals secure in the privacy boarded up windows will provide. Since the 1873 the Convent School was added to with a series of utility extensions in a mixture of red brick. The main living quarters and Mother Superior's Office were pebble dashed in the last century. Owing to lack of maintenance, the Convent retains a number of features; of particular interest is the Sacristy and Chapel which feature arched windows with leaded lights plus a number of religious features including a Confessional and Priest’s Cubby Hole. The groundsman’s store with garage doors either side are of modern construction in common red brick. The Convent has no listed building status. The Convent features a Chapel, Sacristy, Refectory, school rooms in the main building, a school extension on the field side with kitchen, Refectory and service areas on the road side. The service areas comprise a dishwashing room, drying room for the nun’s habits, washroom, coal store, plus a groundsman’s workroom with two garages used for lumber and tool storage. This application for partial change of use relates to the service areas in the outbuildings which back onto Brockhurst Lane facing the large former playground, and to bring back Classroom 4 and Refectory into use for nursery and school. Returning the main building and existing kitchen to educational use requires no change in consent. However, converting the outbuildings to provide additional catering facilities to handle meat separately, bake bread and comply with food safety regulations does. To make the school sustainable and pay for over £270,000 renovation additional permission is required to convert the outbuildings to incorporate a café/meeting area and Community Shop. No extension or change to exterior of the outbuildings is proposed apart from discreet signage to indicate the location of the nursery and village shop to visitors. The minimum renovations to the existing kitchen are listed in Appendix 1 attached. The 40 page schedule of proposed work on the building can be obtained by emailing [email protected] Sara Chambers is a homemade Italian food producer and caterer. Her business, Squisito Deli, is a BBC Good Food Show and Slow Food UK Award Winner 2008 - 2009 and she is an accredited Slow Food producer and Farmers Market trader in Warwickshire and all surrounding counties plus Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Derbyshire amongst others. Squisito is 2 years old and an expanding home based local food business in Brockhurst Lane, Monks Kirby, making fresh Italian food and ice cream from local ingredients almost entirely sourced within a 50km radius according to Slow Food principles. Sara is also a founder member of Slow Food Warwickshire. In the intervening period since the Monks Kirby Parish Plan of 2006, the village lost its remaining shop and Post Office both located in Brockhurst Lane. In 1970 the village featured a Post Office, one general store, two farm shops and two antique shops whilst in 1960 the village also had a butcher and an undertaker located in Brockhurst Lane. The village has two pubs but one of those closed in 2008 and is now under temporary management by villagers but not as a going concern. Sara Chambers proposes a new village shop with a café/meeting area located in the Convent outbuildings whose entrance would face away from the road enclosed by the larger playground. As such, the shop and café/meeting area would be completely self-contained. It is proposed to open the shop and café at the times that villagers indicate they want it open - on the way to and from work or collecting children, for lunch and at weekends to save on shopping trips to Rugby, Coventry, Lutterworth or Leicester. Ken Parsons, Chairman of the Rural Shops Alliance states that "To be a viable business a rural shop needs to operate from 7am to 8pm at night 7 days a week with a Post Office". In this case the other activities will add diversity and sustainability. It is unlikely that a village shop would be able to offer Post Office facilities Sara Chambers is exploring a weekly visit from a mobile Post Office. Sara Chambers is also investigating a grant to introduce a PayPoint so people can pay tax and utility bills. Squisito also propose to restore the walled kitchen garden to feed the children and for use by the children’s and adults cookery school sharing the same facilities. Squisito is in consultation with The Royal Horticultural Society’s School Gardening Team, Let's Get Cooking and The School Food Trust. Regarding traffic in Monks Kirby, with which there is significant village concern in relation to the number of parents dropping off and collecting children from the Revel School between 08:30 - 09:00 and 15:15 -15:45, the addition of nursery and pre-school/after-school facilities will reduce traffic to the neighbouring Revel School at peak times because parents can drop off children earlier or later.