AN Open Day is being held at the Old Vicarage Flats building in St Ives between 10am-2pm on Saturday, November 16 to enable local people to see what has been happening with the project ahead of the start of the major refurbishment works.

The Old Vicarage Flats project, which is being led by St Ives Community Land Trust, will see the historic building in the centre of St Ives converted to provide two 1-bedroom and four 2-bedroom high quality affordable flats for rent to local people.

Awarded £750,000 from St Ives Town Deal Fund, the Old Vicarage Flats project is the first community-led housing project to be delivered in the town centre.

Project lead Jill Block, from St Ives Community Land Trust said: “Whilst local people may not have seen major changes to the exterior of the building over the past few months, we have been working very hard behind the scenes to appoint a contractor and prepare for the start of the main refurbishment works.“

This preparatory work 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 drilled the bore holes required for the installation of the intended ground source heat pump system.

“We are now ready to start work on renovating and converting the building and are delighted to have the opportunity to stage an Open Day to give people the opportunity to tour the site before the refurbishment begins”.

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.