IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Whitebeam Close, DORCHESTER, DT2 9XT

Older maps sow a "Hospital" on this site. The Herrison [sic] Mental Hospital closed some years ago and the whole site is in undergoing redevelopment as a "new village" with some 300 houses in varying sizes and styles. This is just a small part which is nearing completion.

Once a mental hospital, now part of the village of Charlton Down and converted into flats.

Wood Hill is a small but prominent hill on the south side of the Charlton Down complex of housing.

This footpath runs south from Charlton down up the northern slope of Wood Hill and then on into the valley of the Cerne

One of the three larger original buildings of the Herrison Hospital (see Image) which has been converted for use as the village hall.

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.