In 2021, Escrick Park Estate presented its proposals for a new community for North Yorkshire in response to Selby District Council’s requirement for strategic housing sites to be allocated in the emerging Local Plan.

Heronby will lie to the south west of the village of Escrick, midway between Selby and York, on a site owned by the Estate.

This carefully masterplanned settlement is inspired by the character and function of some of its neighbouring communities; with its own market square, a high street, business space, new schools and a broad mix of homes.

Vision

Escrick Park Estate is committed to ensuring that Heronby is faithful to tradition yet fit for the 21st century.

The Estate’s vision for Heronby is a beautifully designed and functional settlement with homes, employment space, schools, shops and green open spaces that sit comfortably within the landscape.

The new settlement will be sustainable and distinctive, providing a full range of house types, sizes and tenures, integrated to achieve a socially inclusive, mixed-income development. Cycling and walking will be prioritised and there will be public open spaces to encourage regular outdoor activity for all ages and interests.

The Estate will oversee the design and delivery of a comprehensive masterplan to ensure the new settlement meets its aspiration.

Escrick Park Estate wants Heronby to reflect the very best of North Yorkshire and to be an enduring success. From the very first homeowner, the people who live and work at Heronby will be invited to participate in the creation of the new settlement and will be able to play their role in the daily running, and social life, of the community.

The Site

The proposed site for Heronby is 241-hectares to the south west of Escrick, bounded by the A19 to the east and the Escrick/Stillingfleet Road to the north. At the heart of the site, on a plateau above the surrounding land, lies Heron Wood. A pedestrian and cycle route, part of the Trans Pennine Way, runs from north to south, down the centre of the site.

The Heronby site is particularly well suited to development. Unlike much of the central area of the district, it is almost entirely outside Flood Zones 2 and 3. The majority of the site is within Flood Zone 1, with the lowest probability of flooding, with a small portion of the site in Flood Zone 2.

It is not designated as Green Belt land - the north east corner of the site is close to the York Green Belt – and lies some way beyond the Escrick Conservation Area.

The Heronby masterplan provides an opportunity to improve the ecology of Heron Wood, which sits within the site. New, native trees and shrubs would be planted to increase the biodiversity of the area which is largely today a monocultural commercial plantation. Most of Heron Wood is designated as PAWS, meaning a Plantation on Ancient Woodland Site. The new, enhanced planting of indigenous species would help create a much more natural environment where native plants and animals can thrive.

In addition, there would be more tree planting and other habitat creation across the whole of the Heronby site which would further increase the biodiversity of the area.

Although power lines run through the site, the largest of which is a 132kV line, our long-term aspiration is that this would be laid underground.

A large part of the site is surrounded by land which is also owned by Escrick Park Estate. This allows us to take a holistic approach to development, ensuring that the settlement has a clear and defined relationship with the wider landscape and historic, social and ecological contexts.

Inspiration

The Estate’s ideas have been inspired by both the best architecture of North Yorkshire’s towns and villages, and by the principles of New Urbanism. We want to build a place that adopts the most successful features of our region’s historic settlements, while creating a place which meets the needs and challenges of the present day. We are not alone, and the results of this approach are bearing fruit at new towns and villages such as Tornagrain and Chapelton in Scotland, and Nansledan in Cornwall.

Tornagrain

Chapelton

Chapleton

Many of these new communities are being developed by landowners like Escrick Park Estate, which have traditionally built homes and facilities to serve the needs of generations of local people.

Because of their deep and historic ties with their communities, these landowners are today well placed to make the long-term commitments needed to bring about beautiful, sustainable places where people want to live, work and relax: communities fit for the 21st century and beyond.

These communities provide for the day-to-day needs of their residents, with access to open space, health, leisure, retail and sporting facilities, and mean people do not need to rely on cars to make use of these amenities.

The Estate also has undertaken a wide-ranging study of settlements in the region, focusing on those with attractive urban forms, to help it draw up its masterplan.

Five settlements were identified as being particularly relevant: Northallerton, Malton, Market Weighton, Selby and Thirsk.

This study showed that there were a number of features which are characteristic of the local area:

Communities are often centred either around large squares or long high streets, which are home to historic market places.
Town squares tend to feature infill buildings, such as town halls or other civic landmarks, as well as market crosses and other memorials.
High streets are long and often widen to accommodate markets, and again feature town halls or a market cross, for example.
Buildings are usually Georgian in style as a result of an economic boom across the region during that period, with rectangular sash windows with white surrounds, symmetrical facades, chimney stacks and relatively little other ornamentation. Town centre buildings tend to be two or three storeys high.
Urban patterns are drawn largely from the medieval period with long, narrow plots clustered around central streets.
Most post-war growth, in homes and industry, has taken place at the periphery of towns, leaving the communities with strong and historic senses of place and character.

*Inspired images of Ripon, Bedale and Northallerton

Ripon

Bedale

Northallerton

The study also looked at the materials used in the construction of local communities.

It found:

Because the region has good access to high-quality clay, brick is often a dominant construction material. Early timber-face buildings have often been refaced in brick.
Bricks reflect the local geology and are usually brown or pale pink in colour. Victorian brick buildings can exhibit greater variety, using white and pale cream bricks in some cases.
The second most common building finish is render, coloured white, cream or in pale shades.
Stone is used sparingly, for prestigious focal points including churches, civic buildings and banks.
Roof materials are usually either natural clay pantiles or slate – Welsh grey and, rarely, Westmoreland green slate.
In most cases, historic road surfaces have been replaced with asphalt. However, cobblestones have been reinstated in some towns in market places and on high streets.

Masterplan

Feedback from two public consultations has helped to shape the updated masterplan for Heronby, a new community for North Yorkshire.

The proposed garden settlement between Selby and York, delivered by Escrick Park Estate, will embody the best of contemporary masterplanning practice in the UK.

Heronby will be a sustainable new settlement designed to meet a significant proportion of the Selby area’s housing needs over new Local Plan period and beyond.

Heronby will deliver a total of 4,000 homes and amenities including a settlement centre, three neighbourhood centres, a secondary school and two primary schools, open space, parks and sports fields, an employment centre and community buildings.

Essential infrastructure including off-site highway improvements and utilities provision will be delivered, with appropriate funding contributions from the Estate.

An initial public consultation into the proposals took place in early 2021. Due to pandemic restrictions, the consultation was online only, via this website.

Your feedback informed changes to an initial outline masterplan, the updated version of which was displayed and consulted upon at a three-day event in September 2021 at the Escrick and Deighton Club, and online. You can see material from those consultations here in our archive.

Feedback from both consultations, as well as a wide range of technical analyses, has helped the project team shape its updated masterplan.

The changes to the masterplan include:

The addition of a country park to the north of Heronby, to provide a major new public amenity space for local residents, as well as an informal green corridor and pedestrian link between Heronby and Escrick.
The centre of the new community has been moved to the west, away from ancient woodland, and reduced in size to create a more intimate and inviting space, better suited to the scale of the new settlement.
Access from the Stillingfleet-Escrick Road has been realigned to preserve the avenue of veteran cork oaks on the northern boundary of the site.
Building layouts have been realigned to preserve high-quality trees, enhance wildlife corridors and improve off-road pedestrian and cycle links.
Green corridors have been added to further protect existing trees, accommodate sustainable drainage and support wildlife.
Major amendments to the plot layouts in the south-east of the site will enhance connectivity between habitats on and off the site.
A detailed sustainable drainage network has been designed, to include connections to green spaces and the riparian network within the site and beyond, especially north to the country park and south to the clay works restoration site.

Following the updates to the masterplan, a comprehensive delivery strategy has been produced which demonstrates the viability and deliverability of the project, as well as Escrick Park Estate’s commitment to meeting Selby District Council’s requirements for a new garden settlement in the district.

Heronby Delivery Strategy

Heronby Delivery Strategy Executive Summary

Heronby will be more than just a collection of houses. The goal is to meet residents’ day-to-day needs and minimise requirements to travel further afield.

The plan will include residential, retail, commercial, health and social amenities, grouped in strategic locations within the site.

Some guiding principles include:

Up to 4,000 new homes in a range of sizes to meet local need, with a proportion of affordable housing aligned with local plan policy.
Employment opportunities will be provided in neighbourhood centres, and a distinct employment area.
There will be the potential for up to three schools: two primary schools; and a secondary school.
Nursery / pre-school provision will also be included in the masterplan.
Community, health and social amenities could include a community hall, market place and place of worship in the centre, with the possibility for neighbourhood-scale community gathering spaces. There will be a range of shops to meet local needs, a small supermarket, and healthcare including GP and dentist provision. A sports pavilion will be provided to support outdoor activity with the possibility of indoor leisure provision.
In addition to sports facilities, a wide network of green open space will be provided, ranging from existing woodland to parks, green corridors and allotments.

While not part of the masterplan proposal, the Estate is considering how a new A19 bypass around Escrick village could compliment the Heronby proposals. To the extent that delivery of this bypass involves Estate landholdings, the Estate wishes to support this improvement if it is seen as desirable by the Council and other local community stakeholders.

Beyond the site boundaries, the Estate is also exploring other potential opportunities on land it owns which would support the delivery of Heronby. These include:

Wildflower meadows for biodiversity and leisure;
A cycle and fitness trail for recreation and sport;
A recreational area to the south of the site, on land presently used for clay extraction; and
Reinstated water bodies and lowland meadow.

Delivery

Whilst the project is still at an early stage of development, we are already thinking how best to ensure delivery is controlled and carefully adheres to the principles we have set, if the Estate is fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to build Heronby. To this end, the Estate will draw up a number of mechanisms and controls to maintain quality and ensure that Heronby will be built according to its vision and in line with the masterplan.

A system of design codes will be used to ensure that each phase of Heronby is built to the required quality and consistency, providing a framework to ensure that the settlement is developed in accordance with the agreed vision.

The design codes will also give certainty to the local planning authority and community over the nature of the development that will be delivered at Heronby.

The development of non-residential components will be subject to the same quality-control mechanisms. In key areas, such as the centre, the Estate wishes to explore the potential to build and own the non-residential elements itself to ensure they are delivered to the right standards at the right time.

During the delivery phase, working groups will be established, to provide regular progress updates and input into the delivery of Heronby. These might include:

A group comprising Escrick Park Estate and Local and Parish Councils, which will monitor planning applications, the process of delivery on site, and occupation of dwellings as they are completed.
A further project group, formed of the Estate, housebuilders and other contractors, to ensure control over the quality of construction.
Other topic-based Steering Groups, formed from time to time to deal with matters such as education, transport, and parks and open space, for example.

Escrick Park Estate wants to ensure not only that Heronby is built to a high standard, but that this quality is safeguarded in perpetuity through mechanisms of stewardship. To this end, it will establish an Estate and Community stewardship body to manage many aspects of the new settlement over the long term. It will have a clear mandate to promote sustainable lifestyles, support the growth of the local economy, and nurture community development.

Established early in the development process, this group will provide focus for the new community and will be directly accountable to residents and businesses on site.

Escrick Park Estate will continue to engage with Selby District Council during the period to the adoption of the Local Plan, to ensure that it provides a reasonable proportion of affordable homes at Heronby, which will align with the requirements of the emerging Local Plan.

Selby District Council Local Plan Timeline