IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Laburnum Road, DORCHESTER, DT2 9FE

Houses on the new residential development where it abuts open farmland.

Charlton Down seems like a rather nice estate located next to open countryside above the Cerne valley. This view looks into the estate from its northern edge.

This modern postbox is at the western part of Charlton Down, outside the general store. It is emptied at 4:15pm on weekdays and at 11am on Saturdays. For more discussion of the Charlton Down estate, see Image

This large tree stands by the village shop, whose frontage is just about in picture on the left-hand edge. For more about this development, see Image

Here we look along Sherren Avenue, the central thoroughfare of the Charlton Down estate. The estate occupies a 400-acre site which was the Herrison Mental Hospital, an asylum which had opened in Victorian times and became the Dorset County Mental Hospital in 1920 before taking the Herrison name in 1940. The three major buildings were redeveloped, following the abandonment of the site in the early 1990s, into dwellings and hundreds of houses, such as those pictured, were built on the surrounding land.

You can also see another barn on the way across the down towards Forston.

Once a mental institution, this austere building has been converted into flats forming part of the village of Charlton Down near Charminster.

This Elizabeth II-reign postbox serves the eastern half of the Charlton Down estate and is emptied at 11am each morning except Sunday.

Charlton Down is a new village built on the site of Herrison hospital which used to be Dorset County Mental Hospital. Many of the old hospital buildings have been converted to apartments and housing as well as many new houses being built.