FORMER village baker Peter White has been given permision to transform part of his old bakery premises to be used for housing.

Purbeck planning chiefs have given the go-ahead for the cafe building fronting onto the High Street to be turned into a four-bedroom house.

Peter White said: "It was a lovely house originally - my grandmother used to live there."

White's Bakers was a family business dating back to 1866. Mr White's grandmother, Ada, took it on from her cousins - the Chinchen family - in the 1920s.

Civic planners have agreed to the conversion of number 38 High Street with an extension built in Purbeck stone with natural slate roof at the rear of the building.

An application to build a three-bedroom house on the site of the bakery warehouse at the rear of the cafe is currently the subject of a planning appeal.

Purbeck planning chiefs refused the proposal last September and the factory warehouse, which was built some 30 years ago, now stands empty.

Peter first started working at the bakery as a schoolboy delivering hot cross buns - at a time when traditional brick ovens were heated by coal fires. His father ran White's up until the 1960s when Peter and his brother, Tony, took it on, and finally Peter carried on alone when his brother retired 14 years ago.

Peter retired in the spring of 2001 at the age of 72. He plans to let the house when building work is finished.