WORK is well underway on a flats conversion at a Victorian primary school which parents and teachers fought hard to retain.

Gilberts Hill School had taught Swindon children since the town was dominated by the Great Western Railway.

But the building was recently sold to private developers Bower Mapson, based at Stanton Fitzwarren, who are converting it into eight two-bed and two three-bed flats.

Construction manager Richard Newman said: "We have just started renovation work inside and at present are taking out old timber boarding and partitions. We expect the complete conversion to take between six months and a year."

The company's marketing spokesman Trevor Cribb said it would be a prestige place in which to live but declined to reveal the price level at which the flats are likely to be sold.

Suggestions by conservationists that the historic building should be listed were not pursued, but Mr Cribb stressed that there are no plans to change the school's red brick exterior.

"We recognise that it's a building which the local community cares about and the scheme lends itself to the retention of the whole of the faade," he said.

"A lot of the interior work will also bear in mind its character."

The school was boarded up since David Blunkett, as Education Secretary, refused to veto Swindon Council's decision to close the 120-year-old building on the grounds that the school was too small and no longer viable.

It had been the subject of an 18-months campaign by a group which claimed it had been providing first class educational prospects in a caring environment.

The last children to be taught there moved out at the end of the summer term two years ago.

Local people who later responded to an Evening Advertiser poll suggested the old school could be put to a variety of community uses However many of the proposals would have required council funding of at least £500,000.

Organisations that were interested in it included the Sixth Sense Dance and Theatre Company, the Greenspace Project, an Islamic group and the local Baha'i community.