More details confirmed for Trinity Yard redevelopment

More details have been confirmed for plans to redevelop Trinity Yard in Windsor with a series of flats, commercial spaces and a cobbled pedestrianised courtyard to create a ‘vibrant core’.

The Trinity Yard development would include seven ground floor commercial units for businesses, shops, or services, and 15 flats with residents’ parking and a pedestrianised courtyard.

This part two-storey, part three-storey scheme is by Sorbon Estates, part of Shanly Group.

It has lodged a planning application with the Royal Borough for development ‘at numbers 59 to 61 St Leonards Road and land to the rear’, ie Trinity Yard.

This site currently features a collection of one- and two-storey buildings, mainly commercial, spanning an area of 2,410sqm.

The ground floors of numbers 59, 59a, and 61 will continue to be used for businesses.

Most of the buildings in the Yard are set to be demolished, including the mortuary.

This site will be left undeveloped and used to provide 15 car parking spaces, including two disabled parking bays. There will also be a cycle storage area with space for 22 bicycles.

The rest of the buildings would be reconstructed to make the ground floor commercial units surrounding the proposed courtyard.

This courtyard, with a traditional cobbled surface, is intended to be a car-free space for customers.

It will create ‘a vibrant core’ for the development and ‘a new attraction for this part of Windsor,’ Sorbon claims.

The 15 flats are set for the first and second floors and there would also be a remodelling of the upper floors of the St Leonard’s Road frontage buildings to create five more.

Of the 15 apartments, one would be a single three-bedroom flat, while the majority – nine in total – would be two-beds. There would also be five one-bed flats.

The upper floor remodelling would create three two-beds and two one-beds.

A first-floor extension is planned at number 59 to improve the street scene by masking the ‘unpleasant cliff-face like’ end wall of the four-storey building which faces the application site.

The introduction of a new bridge over the entrance ‘will improve the street scene considerably’ mainly by obscuring this cliff-like end wall, Sorbon says.

The ‘industrial aesthetic of the more interesting buildings’ on the site has been adopted as the defining aesthetic for the new buildings.

Towards the end of last year, Windsor residents were invited to an unveiling of the plans for the new Trinity Yard development.

A spokesperson for Sorbon Estates said it received ‘overwhelmingly positive comments’ about the design of the development.

“This project combines a thoughtful blend of new residential apartments above modernised commercial spaces on the ground floor, all designed to enhance the area while preserving and respecting its historic design vernacular,” they said.

The application sent to RBWM is an outline application which only covers the access, appearance, layout and scale of the scheme.

Later down the line there will be a ‘reserved matters’ application, detailing the other aspects of the proposal.

To see all plans, enter reference number 25/00460/OUT into RBWM’s planning portal.