White Horse Contractors transforms steeply sloping agricultural land into £1.2m sports facilities

White Horse Contractors transforms steeply sloping agricultural land into £1.2m sports facilities for Danes Hill Preparatory School.

White Horse Contractors (WHC) has successfully helped Danes Hill Preparatory School in Surrey convert 12 acres of steeply sloping agricultural land into artificial and natural sports pitches for use by its 880 pupils. The specialist sports contracting company has a wide range of experience in construction, drainage and renovation services for sport and leisure facilities throughout the UK.

As part of the negotiation for a new lease arrangement with Crown Estates, the school secured additional land which was formerly in agricultural use. This piece of land was large enough to create five natural turf sports pitches and a full size sand dressed artificial sports pitch, effectively doubling the sports facilities available to the school. Prior to the successful development of this scheme, the school had insufficient suitable sports facilities for all of its pupils all of the time.

Danes Hill Preparatory School appointed WHC after becoming aware of the company through their successful development of a large number of top class pitches at Chelsea Football Club's training ground in neighbouring Cobham. In addition to this strong reputation, WHC offered the ability to commence the project almost immediately, meeting the tight timescale demanded by the school for the project which was to deliver the artificial sports pitch ready for use at the start of the new academic year.

The steeply sloping agricultural land was converted into four distinct plateaus to accommodate the new sports pitches, which involved a large scale earth-moving operation. The scheme at Danes Hill required careful and detailed project management by WHC to ensure that there was no disruption to the school's day-to-day activities.

WHC has strong environmental credentials and places great importance in delivering projects which reduce the impact on the environment and provide aesthetic enhancement. To maintain these credentials WHC worked closely with the school and the project architects to minimise the amount of materials taken off site. This was achieved by balancing the 'cut and fill' earthworks, the construction of a number of complex retaining walls and creating a range of innovative landscaping solutions including the creation of coaching and viewing banks adjacent to the new sporting facilities.

The £1.2m scheme includes the following facilities:

• Full-size artificial sports pitch suitable for hockey, football and a range of other sports, constructed using a Tiger Turf Evolution carpet, over a 15mm shock pad, 60mm porous tarmac and 300mm of Type 1 sub base.

• Five natural turf sports pitches suitable for rugby and football, constructed with 250mm of screened site topsoil ameliorated with 50mm of sand and 50mm of compost, full sub surface drainage at 5m centres and seeded with an A20 grass mix.

• Two cricket pitches, with wickets constructed with 125mm of base loam and 75mm of cricket loam both from Surrey Loams and seeded with an A5 grass mix.

For further information on White Horse Contractors, please visit www.whitehorsecontractors.co.uk