Now this site has some history. In 1788, Nathaniel Kemp bought a plot of land in the centre of Ovingdean village and he built Ovingdean House there during 1792.
In 1891, Ovingdean House became a young gentlemen’s school, which by that time was renamed Ovingdean Hall. Several extra school buildings were built by 1897. In 1941 the school moved to Devon during World War II, and the Canadian Army took over the Ovingdean site.
By the end of the war in 1945, it was sold to the Brighton Institution for the Deaf and Dumb school and in 1947 was reopened as a school that continued until the summer of 2010 as Ovingdean Hall School for the hearing impaired children from 11 to 19yrs.
Over recent years the demand declined and the school partially closed, however, with new funding refurbishment and rebuilding is planned and we are very pleased to be involved.
Survey work has begun and with quite a bit of historic drawing information available, we are piecing it all together.
The general proposal is to upgrade classrooms, to provide better welfare and toilet facilities and provide some new accommodation for the students. We are looking forward to getting underway with the structural design.
Civil engineering should be quite straight forward, linking up the new drainage system with the original and provide additional soakaways in the chalk for the surface water.
