32 bedroom extension planned for St Peter’s Nursing Home

St Peter’s Nursing Home in Castlebellingham

A new 32-bedroom extension is planned for St Peter’s Nursing Home in Castlebellingham.

Costern t/a Trinity Care have applied to Louth County Council for planning permission for the development at the Sea Road care facility.

As well as 32 en-suite bedrooms they hope to include a new dining room, day and visitor rooms, staff room, clinical room and ancillary spaces totalling 1,438sqm.

This would consist of a 12 bedroom single storey extension to the east side and a 20 bedroom single storey extension to the west side of the existing single storey 1,672sqm nursing home.

Site works would include the provision of a new feature landscaped courtyards, sensory gardens and revised landscaping, carparking and associated alteration to the existing surface water drainage system to provide a total of 57 parking spaces.

The local authority are due to make a decision on the matter by July 19^th.

Local graves now appearing online

Locals may be interested to know that a number of their deceased friends and relatives’ graves are now appearing online.

In a move that will be welcomed by some and seen as an invasion of privacy by others, Northern Irish company Ever After have recorded the plot information of a number of local graveyards on their site www.discovereverafter.com

While to date Bridge-A-Crinn cemetery in Faughart and St Fursey’s Cemetery in Haggardstown are the only two in this area available on the site, along with St Peter’s in Drogheda, it is understood that there are plans in place to plot more local graveyards.

As well as giving an interactive map of the cemetery, Ever After takes a picture of each grave and records a number of details about the individual(s) buried there, including: their name, date of death, townland, age and any additional information such as who they are related to.

The site then has a link allowing people to place flowers on the grave while donations can also be made to the parish or church.

Ever After – who are based in Portglenone in Antrim – have received EU and government funding under the Rural Development Programme but a number of locals are concerned about their deceased loved ones’ breach of privacy.

Leona and Sean McAlister set up Plotbox, a cemetery and crematorium programme that allows content to be generated for their genealogy website discovereverafter.com

In February this year they won Invest NI’s Propel Company of the Year award. While the bulk of the cemeteries on the site are based in Northern Ireland, they are increasingly adding southern sites to their website.