THE name and opening date for a new care home being built next to Hermitage Park in Helensburgh have been revealed.

Simply UK revealed the details for the 64-bed development as they celebrated the 'topping out' of the building.

The company says the steel frame of the structure has now been completed and that internal work will continue until the expected completion in June of this year.

The property – to be known as 'Hermitage House' – will open the following month.

Paul Lindsay, Simply UK's senior site manager, said: “From a personal point of view this development has been extremely rewarding.

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"It is exciting to see the development near completion with Hermitage House due to open in July 2021.

"Simply UK are expanding rapidly throughout UK, the huge growth will be exciting to be involved in over the next 12 months.”

The property is being built on a former Argyll and Bute Council depot site to the north of the park.

Plans for the home were approved by the local authority's planning committee in October 2019 following a 5-4 vote in favour of the company's plans.

The application – which was submitted in a revised form in July of that year, days after a previous proposal was withdrawn – attracted 57 objections from members of the public.

READ MORE: Simply UK's Helensburgh care home plans approved after knife-edge vote

The Friends of Hermitage Park put in a bid to buy the site in 2018 after it was put up for sale by the council, but the authority accepted Simply UK's bid for the land instead.

Hermitage House was the name of the property which stood in the centre of nearby Hermitage Park.

The original Hermitage House was built in the late 1830s or early 1840s for Glasgow merchant Robert Alexander Fulton and his family.

The house and its grounds were sold by the Cramb family to Helensburgh Town Council in 1911, and the building was used by the Red Cross as an auxiliary hospital for wounded servicemen during the First World War.

The increasingly dilapidated building was eventually demolished in 1963.