A 20-BED extension is being planned for the Casterbridge Manor care home in Cerne Abbas – to the rear of the existing home.

An application has been lodged with Dorset Council for the Grade 2 listed Acreman Street building by owners Avatara Inc Ltd.

If approved it will increase the capacity of the home from 61 to 81 and almost double the floor space of the complex. It will also create an additional twenty full-time staff to bring staff numbers to 100 full-time and eight part time.

The application includes an additional 36 parking spaces, four designated for disabled drivers.

Dorset Echo: Illustrations – How the new care home extension might look – courtesy Western Design ArchitectsIllustrations – How the new care home extension might look – courtesy Western Design Architects

The company say the new linked building, if allowed, will offer extra care accommodation and has been designed for minimum impact on the countryside site just outside the village off the A352 and facing the Cerne Abbas Giant carved into the hilldside opposite.

It has produced an ecological survey to support the application and says that external lighting will be low level and minimal with ‘green roofs’ on the extension to help blend into the landscape, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Dorset Echo: Ariel view of the siteAriel view of the site

“The proposed two storey accommodation will be subservient in scale to the existing building. The ridge height will be lower than the existing care home. The forms are broken up to reduce the bulk and massing on site and to avoid one continuous solid form, it also creates further gaps to retain visual landscape links. The proposed green roofs and timber cladding will help reduce the visual impact of the new building and help blend the building into the landscape,” said a report to the council by Western Design Architects.

The architects say a cross-shape building has been chosen to match the existing care home, once the village workhouse constructed in the 1830s.

Comments on the application, Dorset Council reference 2021/03000, remain open until September 20th.