Welcome to marston vale-iums web page

During the Second World War the Elstow Storage Depot was developed as a storage and manufacture depot for armaments. Between 1942 and 1945 it was one of the country's largest and most secret bomb-making factories with six million bombs being made at the factory in little over two years. At the height of the war over 2,000 people were employed on the site, which operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After the war the bomb filling stopped and the site was taken over by the Central Electricity Generating Board, later known as National Power, who had a number of ideas for the site. In the early eighties Nirex put forward plans to develop the site as a low-level nuclear waste storage depot. The local community vigorously opposed the plans and in 1987 it was decided that the land wasn't suitable as a repository for nuclear waste and the plans were dropped. In recent times, the depot has been used by a variety of more than thirty small businesses.

Today there are plans to turn the Elstow Storage Depot into a new settlement known as the Elstow Garden Villages.

Innogy, previously National Power, in a joint venture with Gallagher Estates have submitted an outline planning application for the creation of a major new settlement which will include 4,500 new homes, with associated services and facilities, and a range of employment opportunities.

The local community was invited to a planning weekend to give their views and ideas on how to makethe proposed new settlement a place where people would want to live, work and develop a true sense of community.

The development covering 694 acres will lie between the A6 and B530 and it is proposed, subject to permission, that the A6 will be realigned more in an easterly direction and that the existing A6 will act as the main road to the settlement.

Remedial work will have to be carried out on the site before any building work commences. Once these have been achieved, the first part of the new settlement will be developed.

It is proposed that by 2006, 975 new homes will have been built and that by 2011 there will be 4,500 homes. The developers aim is to create an attractive community which enables its inhabitants to have a good and safe quality of life, where there is a sustainable relationship between the social, cultural and economic activity of the town and the built and natural environment, and where people from all walks of life will want to live.

There are plans for a new railway station and a link with the Thameslink line, cycleways, attractive walkways and road calming measures to reduce car speeds. There will be three greenways with ponds and a diversity of habitats to create wildlife corridors. A choice of houses with gardens and a variety of tenures will be offered. Each village will have a focus, there will be shops, schools, community centres, doctors and public houses and an opportunity for varied local employment so as to minimise outward commuting and encourage work places near to homes and businesses that are environmentally friendly that can establish linkages with existing firms in the area.

It is planned that development will start in January 2002.

Put your mouse over the image and prepare to take off! Then click on the plane for a 'flying visit' of Marston Vale's industry section or click the text.