THE property developer behind the multi-million pound conversion of a 189-year-old church into luxury studio apartments has opened its doors to the public.

Trinity Court on the site of the former Holy Trinity Church next to Bolton railway station was officially launched by Bolton Mayor, Cllr Martin Donaghy.

The Grade Two Listed “building within a building” now has 82 apartments divided into three sections – The Church, The Knave and The Gatehouse. Twenty-one of the flats have already been taken.

The apartments are being let by Primo Property Management, the sister company of Bolton property developers Forshaw Land and Property Group founded by Lyndon Forshaw in 2008 and run with director brothers Glenn and Jonathan.

The Forshaw company was born out of Forshaw Demolition, founded in 1921 by their grandfather Walter Forshaw and run by their father Harry, who rang bells at the church as a youngster.

The full refurbishment has been carried out by Haslingden firm Colbre Projects Ltd and has taken 16 months to complete.

Project leader was construction director Bob Misell. He said: “If the building had been left much longer, it would have started to collapse. Our initial objective was to prevent the shell of the church from deteriorating while the plans for the development were drawn up.

“It has been reroofed and the parapet walls have been rebuilt. More than 50,000 concrete blocks have been used in what has been a major structural project.

“Great lengths have been gone to by the developer and ourselves to preserve the character of the building and there are some beautiful features which remain from the original church.”

Holy Trinity Church was one of the so-called Waterloo Churches built with a government fund set up in 1818 as a token of the nation’s thanks for victory in the famous battle against Napoleon. It cost £13,824 - £1 million in today’s money – to build and had been empty since 1992.