The Margaret Stancomb Memorial Infants' School was built in 1893 and funded by John Perkins Stancomb in memory of his late wife.
Thousands of local children passed through its doors until they closed in 2008, when the school merged with Trowbridge Parochial Junior School to become Bellefield Primary School at a different site.
The Wiltshire Rural Music School expressed an interest in using the main building, but the agreement fell through and the site remained derelict for over a decade.
Selwood Housing Group secured planning permission to develop the site in summer 2019 and works began straightaway. The first homes were due to be completed in summer 2020, but following a break during the first lockdown, were delivered in the autumn instead.
The original school building has been converted into 3 shared ownership houses, with another 18 homes built in the grounds of the site. These are a mixture of flats and houses for shared ownership and social rent.
If you have any questions regarding the former Margaret Stancomb school site, please call us on 01225 715 715.
Selwood Housing is a not-for-profit housing association with over 6,400 homes for rent at affordable prices in Wiltshire, Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset. We also offer shared ownership, and other schemes to provide a wide variety of homes for people living in our communities. Any surpluses we make are invested back into our communities and this includes building more affordable homes locally.
There is a housing crisis and a shortage of affordable homes in the UK. In the Trowbridge Community area there are currently 346 households in need of a range of affordable rented homes, from one bedroom upwards.
There are also 155 households registered for shared ownership.
The Margaret Stancomb site development is part of our plan to provide more affordable homes within Wiltshire, Mendip and BANES.
Shared ownership is a great way of buying your own home, without having to find a huge deposit up front. With shared ownership you can buy a share of a home and pay a low rent on the rest. This gives you a great alternative to renting, if you can't afford to buy a home outright.
To find out more, visit https://www.selwoodhousing.com/find-a-home/buy-a-home/sharedownership/
You can register your details with us but you must also register with Help to Buy Agent 3: https://www.helptobuyagent3.org.uk/.
They will be competitively priced and based on market values. Buyers can purchase a 40% share and pay a low rent on the rest. Prices for this development will be released close to when the homes are available.
We plan to keep the original school building and convert it into three shared ownership homes.
If our planning application is approved, we will agree with Wiltshire Council the cost of supporting a set number of school places. Before we start building works we will pay this school contribution to Wiltshire Council. This is called a section 106 agreement.
We will also make other section 106 contributions which we will agree with Wiltshire Council.
