When Enabling Development gets … complicated
Parnham House, a Grade I-listed 16th-century manor in Dorset, has been at the centre of a high-profile planning debate. The house had major improvements by Nash in the early C19th, but these suffered very extensive damage from a fire in 2017. Its new owner proposes building 80 homes across 25 acres of parkland and meadow […]
The fine line between Preservation and Renewal
The application to build a housing estate on the parklands and adjoining meadow at Parnham is live on the Dorset Council Planning portal at P/FUL/2025/06865. However, events at Clandon Park House – as reported in The Times https://www.thetimes.com/article/032a5307-50b2-4232-892e-082b9f5c47d7?shareToken=34a63b806bce2fdd8733610d0a7bf88d offer a timely parallel. Both sites share a tragic history of fire damage and the same fundamental question: […]
Planning Development Controversy
This article is taken from www.propertysurveying.co.uk. Link to the recent article here Historic manor restoration sparks planning development controversy A music industry entrepreneur’s ambitious plan to save a fire-damaged heritage property has ignited fierce opposition from local residents who fear environmental destruction in one of England’s most protected landscapes. Parnham House, a Grade I-listed manor […]
Parnham Estate’s plan
Behind the proposal is the neighbouring Parnham Estate. Parnham House, a Tudor mansion with later Nash improvements, was devastated by fire in 2017, leaving much of it a hollow ruin. Its new owner – James Perkins – seeks “exceptional” planning permission for a housing estate as an “enabling development” to fund restoration. Yet doubts abound. […]
A landscape written into Hardy
The land under threat carries deep literary resonance. Hardy drew on it repeatedly, weaving real topography into his fictional Wessex. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Beaminster appears 17 times as “Emminster.” Hardy described it as “the basin in which Emminster and its vicarage lay” and later as “his father’s hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor […]
Hardy’s Beaminster under threat from luxury housing scheme
In September, Dorset Council will be asked to approve an extraordinary proposal: to cover 25 acres of open countryside with 83 private houses. The site lies outside Beaminster’s designated settlement area and within the Dorset National Landscape, a nationally protected area whose legal and policy safeguards specifically rule out such development.