DEMOLITION work has started at a site where a major housing development will be built.

Diggers have this week begun pulling down old buildings at the former Eli Lilly site in Chapel Hill, near Basingstoke railway station.

Barratt Southern Counties and Sentinel Housing Association plan to build 578 new homes on the land, after the two companies were granted outline planning permission for the development in January 2015.

Basingstoke Gazette:

The plans include 257 new houses, 321 new apartments and a network of new public open space.

The development will also include a residential conversion of the iconic white building, which will be transformed into one, two and three-bedroom apartments, with secure parking for 31 cars and 56 cycles.

The white building will have a new canopied communal terrace with black-lit column detail overlooking the park.

Vehicular access to the site will be from the north via Kingsclere Road, from the north east via the existing roundabout at the junction of Kingsclere Road and Chapel Hill, and Pelton Road to the west.

Basingstoke Gazette:

The site was previously used by American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which started building a factory at the site in February 1938, completing it in March 1939, before it opened for business on September 4 – the day after Britain declared war on Germany.

The site closed in 2007 and the white building has been disused since, eventually falling into disrepair and being vandalised.

Sentinel bought the redundant 25.6-acre site in 2012 and following consultation with the community it was granted planning permission for the development.