A Victorian villa at 7 West Road is to be demolished later this month, to make way for a mixed Humanities and Social Sciences building.

The villa, which was built in 1875, is among the last on West Road. However, Professor Peter Mandler, a Director of the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group, said that, “there's nothing particularly special about this villa – it's a good example of its type, but that type was widespread in late Victorian Britain.”

West Road has been losing its Victorian villas for decades but others remain on Grange Road and nearby. Most recently Stephen Hawking’s old family home at 5 West Road was demolished in order for a new first-year accommodation block and conference centre to be built by Gonville and Caius College.

The new four-storey building will be home to seven institutions. These include the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH), the Department of Politics and International Studies, as well as Centres for African, South Asian, and Latin-American Studies.

Each institution will have its own door, but there will be a main atrium and several shared conference rooms. There will also be a new café open to all Sidgwick site users.

The new building has been designed to fit its architecturally modern surroundings, and will use buff-coloured bricks, and anodised aluminium. It has been assessed as “excellent” for energy efficiency. The total cost of the building is estimated at around £16 million

He continued, “It's probably not appreciated how much of a showcase for modern architecture the Sidgwick site already is – it features buildings by many of the greatest architects of the late-20th century."

Most of the green space surrounding the current villa will also be lost to the larger new building. Two tall fir trees to the north of the Law Faculty, and other trees in front of the villa will be removed.

Construction is projected to start around May 7th and continue through Easter term. The construction date has raised concerns among some students about noise levels during exam term.

With Caius accommodation next door, as well as several faculty libraries, one student said that noise is “going to piss me off during exam term”. A worker on site informed Varsity that the University is in discussion with the construction company about noise levels.

The building is projected to be open to the University in August 2011.