DETAILED plans have been released for a 1,500-home estate surrounding Wantage.

London property giant St Modwen has snapped up the multi-million pound Crab Hill project on behalf of a conglomerate of landowners.

The company has previously built New Covent Garden in London and a campus of Swansea University.

Now it has revealed its designs for the fields surrounding Charlton Heights in a planning application to Vale of White Horse District Council.

The plans show how the estate would have at its core hundreds of flats and apartments in high-density zones.

These would be surrounded by three- and four-bedroom homes getting progressively larger towards the outskirts of the estate.

The masterplan also shows the location of a new primary school in the centre of the estate, a park and a "neighbourhood centre" with shops and potentially offices.

Woodland and green spaces are dotted between the houses.

In the planning application, St Modwen told the Vale: "Crab Hill will be a high quality, sustainable, mixed-use development where people will want to live.

"It will also provide new services and facilities, including a primary school, a neighbourhood centre and extensive areas of formal and informal open space that will benefit those living at Crab Hill and the wider community."

In terms of materials to build the houses, St Modwen has submitted the council photographs of orange brick, off-white brick, dark wooden cladding and slate roof tiles.

It has also proposed using off-white render for some of the walls.

Explaining those choices, the company said it drew inspiration from houses in Wantage and Grove to take a "two strand" approach in Crab Hill.

The planners said this would allow "a reasonably concise selection of materials without resulting in a homogenous whole".

These designs have been released just over a year after the Vale granted outline planning permission for the principle of the estate in July 2015.

The council granted that permission to London property promotion firm Lands Improvement Holdings, which, having won permission, put the land up for sale through Abingdon estate agents Kemp and Kemp.

This month, a planning application with detailed designs of housing density and proposed materials has popped up on the Vale's planning register website.

The application comes from "St Modwen Props Plc & Bare Trustees - Crab Hill Partnership", via Kemp and Kemp.

The Vale is aiming to approve or reject the detailed designs by November 23.

Members of public can see the full plans online at whitehorsedc.gov.uk using reference number P16/V2590/DIS