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St. Teresas Close, PRINCES RISBOROUGH, HP27 0JH

St Scholastica's Retreat is a Catholic housing charity founded in London in 1862. The charity moved to Princes Risborough in 1972 and provides sheltered accommodation in these houses.

See Image for details. This is the care home under construction, viewed from outside the site gates. The notice board outside the site states "A Housing Solutions development of a 90 room care home for older people built in Partnership with Buckinghamshire County Council and The Fermantle (sic) Trust." It is to be hoped that the building work is better than the spelling! The Fremantle (for it is they) Trust http://www.fremantletrust.co.uk/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?usr=51F248515&rnd=6030878&rrc=N&affl=&cip=&act=&aff= is a not-for-profit provider of high quality care and support services, currently employing about 1,500 people.

The School, which is shown on all the current OS maps, has been razed to the ground, and a 90 room care home for older people is under construction on the site. At first I thought this was an illustration of changing population demographics with fewer school children and more elderly people being needed to be provided for, but looking at Buckinghamshire Local Education Authority's formal closure notice for the School it appears that the purpose was to provide a new 360 place infants' school in the grounds of the local junior school, Icknield Junior, in Wellington Avenue, in line with the County Council's policy of amalgamating infant and junior schools where possible because it means fewer changes and more stability for children. From the closure notice it appears that the intention was to close the school with effect from 31 December 2001.

This is on the wall of one of the houses run by a charitable trust. SeeImage for context.

The town viewed from the Brush Hill Nature Reserve at the top of Kop Hill

This post-war housing estate has some pleasant open spaces of which this one appears to be the largest.

"St Teresa’s Roman Catholic Church, Princes Risborough was built in 1937 to a design by the architect, Giuseppi Rinvolucri of Conway and stands at the junction of the Aylesbury Road and New Road. Having a distinctive modern Byzantine style, the church was built in a triangular shape (architecturally symbolic of the Holy Trinity), with a large central dome surmounted by a cross." - quoted from this http://www.princesrisborough.com/churches.html.

A view along the row of houses that form a new development of six properties by builders Matthew Homes Ltd in Princes Risborough. The view is from the first storey of the show home (Plot 2) looking northwestwards. As can be seen from the skip and muddy front garden, the site is yet to be completed. The development replaces a single large house previously on the site, called "Longfield".

Hot air ballooning is popular over the Chilterns in the summer. Here a tethered balloon in the King George V Playing field with St Teresa's Church in the background. http://www.st-teresas.org.uk/

Domes and palm leaves, this looks more Byzantium than Buckinghamshire. St Teresa's was built in 1937, a year before a similar church just a bit down the railway line in High Wycombe. Image