A WORLD-FAMOUS Hereford family has revealed its bid to turn a dilapidated former care home into a new sprawling home.

The Bulmer family, which set up the now international cider brand Bulmers, has bought the grade II-listed Hampton House, a grand country home in Hampton Bishop, east of Hereford.

The care home, in Church Lane, shut its doors for good in September 2021 as “a direct consequence of the financial strain that the residential care home had been under for some time”, while the building itself “was no longer fit for purpose”.

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Those were the words of Herefordshire Old People's Housing Society which bought the early 19th century home in 1951 and turned it into a registered residential care home, the cellar of which did flood as the river Wye burst its banks in 2007 and 2020.

An attempt in 2021 to sell the home to a local resident as a going concern eventually fell through as they were unable to secure the necessary finance for the building with ageing and failing facilities.

So it was then the society sold the home to a private buyer on the basis that it is returned to its original use as a family home, including “removal of the more recent unsympathetic extensions”.

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The property was marketed at offers of more than £1 million, and now the Bulmer family has applied for planning permission and listed building consent from Herefordshire Council to convert the building into a private dwelling including associated demolition, repair and building works.

Ledbury-based Montez Architecture, working on the scheme for the Bulmer family, said the plans, if approved by council planners, would result in "clear beneficial impacts" on the "significance" of Hampton House.

"The proposals have sought to minimise this harm as far as possible whilst allowing a much-needed modernisation of the property and new design elements take into the account the materiality, design principles, proportions and symmetry of significant fabric," it said.

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As part of the plans, six extensions of "poor design quality" would be demolished and the internal layout of the main house would be reworked to make it more suited to a domestic setting, rather than its former use as a care home.

Consultants said the plan will bring the home back into use, keep it under single ownership rather than subdividing into flats and improve its condition while conserving the historic fabric.

While the scheme will be a "large overhaul", they said detracting and harmful past repairs will be removed, poorly-designed details will be improved and any repairs to the historic fabric will use traditional materials and techniques, such as the Welsh slate roof.

Consultation on application 222988 is open until November 17.