Local people attend Open Day at Old Vicarage Flats

More than 50 people attended the recent Open Day organised by St Ives Community Land Trust to show the local community what has been happening with its Old Vicarage Flats project ahead of the building closing for the start of the major refurbishment works.

You can watch a short film about the project here .

The project will see the building renovated and converted to provide two 1-bedroom and four 2-bedroom high quality affordable flats for rent to local people.

Considerable preparatory work ahead of the start of the major refurbishment has taken place. This has involved replacing the roof, repairing windows and removing asbestos along with some internal demolition work. The team have also worked with National Grid and BT to sort out the power and energy infrastructure needed to support the conversion of the building into flats, and with members of the Kensa Engineering Ground Source heating design team who will shortly be drilling the bore holes required for the installation of the intended ground source heat pump system.

Known originally as the Parsonage and built in the late 1830’s, the building was home to the Vicars of St Ives until the early 1950’s when Canon Jenkin moved into a newly constructed vicarage off St Andrew’s Street. The building was then taken over by St Ives Borough Council who converted the upper stories into four flats while the ground floor was owned by Cornwall County Council and used by a number of local organisations, including a nursery, the local WI and camera club.

The Old Vicarage lay empty from 2016 until the local community through the St Ives Community Land Trust raised the funds to buy the property in 2019 with the aim of rescuing the historic building and converting it to provide much needed affordable homes for the local community.

The Truro are very aware of the importance of preserving this historic building and have worked closely with the architects to retain as many of the original features as possible. These include the sash windows and the beautiful banister.

They are hoping to confirm details of the contractor who will be carrying out the next phase of the scheme within the next two weeks, with work on renovating and converting the inside of the building due to begin before Christmas.

The refurbishment is expected to take around six months to complete.

The project team are very excited to have finally reached this major milestone and are looking forward to the tenants moving into their new flats by Autumn next year.

This has been a real community-led project, with more than £240,000 raised through the community share issue in 2019, along with many individual donations and via mortgage with Triodos Bank. The Trust has also been supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund, Homes England, Cornwall Community Land Trust, St Ives Town Council, a range of charitable groups, and a number of local organisations such as the Rotary Club. Earlier this year they were awarded £750,000 from St Ives Town Deal Fund. This grant is funding the refurbishment works.

They are continuing to encourage further financial support to enable the Trust to look further into advances in technology to get Smart delivery systems for utilities and services in order to keep costs as low as possible for future tenants.

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