Repairs to a Dorchester wall which has taken almost a year to complete have been praised by town mayor Richard Biggs.

The wall, on the corner of Bowling Alley Walk and West Walk, close to the Borough Gardens, came down just as lockdown was starting in March 2020.

The 20-foot section of a wall, which surrounds the former county hospital site, was the second section to fall – the previous collapse, also on the Walks, was caused by the weight of earth behind it.

That was repaired almost four years ago by the previous Dorset County Council re-using bricks from the site.

Dorchester Mayor Richard Biggs told a Dorchester town council meeting that it had not been possible to re-use the bricks still on the site and finding a new source for similar brickwork had proved difficult and expensive for Dorset Council, which owns the structure.

But he said he was pleased the job had been done and the contracts, Frys, had done a good job.

"It did take a long time, but it was well worth the wait," he told the meeting, explaining that the real hold-up had been in trying to find bricks which matched the originals.

It has never been known whether the wall fell as a result of structural failure or because of vandalism.

Dorchester town council staff stepped in to make the brickwork as safe as they could at the time of the collapse and to section off for safety reasons.