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Work to clear fire-gutted cafe making progress

BBC Fire-gutted building with debris spilling out onto a street of terraced building.BBC
Work is underway to take down loose masonry from the charred wreck of the cafe

Work to stabilise and clear a cafe and three neighbouring buildings following a fire is making progress.

The fire tore through the Grade II listed Gorge Cafe in South Street, Dorchester where novelist Thomas Hardy trained as an architect on 9 December shortly after 03:30 GMT.

A section of the pedestrianised shopping street has been sealed off since - the building collapsed further several weeks after the fire.

Head of building control at Dorset Council David Kitcatt said: "We've got contractors on site now working away taking parts of the dangerous elements of the building down."

Wooden hoarding across street with buildings both sides and scaffolding covering a building on the right.
The entire section of the pedestrianised shopping street has been sealed off since the fire over fears of further collapses
The front of a black council bin left melted and gaping open.
Heat from the fire cracked windows and in the buildings across the other side of the street and left bins melted

Kitcatt said the loose masonry from the building would be removed before the piles of rubble left across the street can be cleared and scaffolding put up.

"They will stabilise the front and take down the loose material before moving the rubble back and then they will clear from the back forward," he said.

He added the council was overseeing public safety at the site but the contractors were running the work at the site as the buildings were privately owned.

He said a more detailed timescale to get the site cleared and stable enough to reopen it to the public was not yet possible to gauge.

"It all depends on how quickly they can work, the weather conditions... and of course public safety is paramount," he said.

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images Aerial view of terrace involed in a fire - bricks and debris from one building are across the street others have gaping holes in the roofs with tiles missing and rafters showing.Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
The cafe was left a charred wreck following the fire
Inside the burnt out café dividing Dorchester

Along with the cafe one building to its left and two to its right were damaged by the heat from the fire and street bins were left melted.

Once the work on the site is finished further scaffolding will be put up on the neighbouring buildings, and the timber hoarding rebuilt to make a new pedestrian access along the street.

About 50 firefighters tackled the blaze and no-one was injured in the fire.

The building had a stone plaque on its front wall, in the centre of the first floor, honouring Thomas Hardy.

It stated the novelist and poet trained at the building as an apprentice architect to John Hicks between 1856-1862.

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