Building thriving communities is at the heart of everything we do, and we recognise the difference we can create through supporting our local communities and charitable projects. Our ‘1,000 Days’ employee campaign encourages colleagues to choose their preferred cause or project to support.
Recently the master planning team used one of their volunteering days to volunteer for Sustrans, a charity that implement and manage the National Cycle Network, making it easier for people to walk and cycle throughout the UK.
The task for the day was to re-paint one of the Millennium milepost signs, the perfect job for three designers! The milepost is located on a strategic cycle route which runs through a completed Redrow development, St Katherine’s Park, the redevelopment of the former Ham Green Hospital near Bristol. St Katherine’s Park was redeveloped in 1999-2001. The original Nurses Home has been retained and separated into apartments. Cycle route 41 runs through St Katherine’s Park and provides residents and locals with good access into Bristol. The Millennium Milepost sits on a green open space just at the entrance of the St Katherine’s Park development.
In 1999, one thousand cast iron Millennium Mileposts were created to help celebrate the creation of the National Cycle Network, at the turn of the century. The Mileposts all provide route and distance information as well as holding a secret Time Trail treasure hunt within their discs. The Mileposts come in four different designs. The Milepost located at St Katherine’s Park was designed by a Welsh artist, Andrew Rowe, and is based upon the nautical and industrial heritage of his native Swansea and can have up to four directional fingers.
As a company we have been using our Redrow 8 placemaking principles for three years now. The placemaking principles are used to ensure that we create great places to live for our customers. One of the Redrow 8 Placemaking principles is Easy to Get Around. This ensures that we are providing an easy to navigate development, that provides connections out to the existing community and local employment, produces a healthy, vibrant and sustainable place to live by encouraging residents to walk or cycle.
During our time out painting the Millennium Milepost we were fortunate enough to meet a lot of the local residents who stopped to chat to us about the Redrow development as well as the Millennium Milepost. All the residents were really positive and said that it was a great place to live and that there was a real sense of community at St Katherine’s Park. The residents were also very grateful that we had chosen to use one of our volunteering days to paint the Millennium Milepost, which hadn’t been touched in over 20 years.
