Raglan House vanished last week. Roofless for the last few months, in the course of a couple of days' intensive demolition, the big square white mid-Victorian building on Westminster Bank was levelled to the ground. But all being well, an almost identical building will take its place by this time next year. The old building was kept for many years by a Miss Martin as a "first class lodging house" in the days of the water cure in the late 19th Century; soon "New Raglan House" will be a state of the art 21st Century media centre. But its external appearance will be little changed.

The project is the brainchild of Worcester-born composer Paul Farrer, who two years ago moved into neighbouring Bank House (formerly owned by St James's School and known as The Bungalow - although it has two storeys!).

Paul is best known for having composed the music to the international TV blockbuster The Weakest Link. Working from home, he needs studio and recording facilities, and was considering extending his home, when adjoining Raglan House came onto the market, and he conceived the idea of converting it to a suite of studios and offices with facilities for some of the many currently home-based media-related video, graphics and web businesses in the Malvern area.

His first idea was to adapt the interior of the existing building, but when work began, it soon became clear that the structure was not sound enough to withstand the alterations, so he obtained planning permission to rebuild, from the ground up, a building of the same size and appearance, including original features like the sash windows and portico doorway.

Construction work should be well underway by the middle of this year and the media centre could be in occupation before the middle of 2005. Paul is keen to make the facilities available to neighbouring St James's and other schools, and for work experience students, having benefited from these opportunities himself. Incidentally, he is to be this year's guest of honour at St James's School's commemoration day on July 7.

Alongside the rebuilding of Raglan, residents will also have noticed with approval that Paul is undertaking the major project of rebuilding, in the original Malvern stone, the massive wall surrounding the upper boundary of Bank House, which has been in a parlous state for some years. And Paul is anxious to assure local people that the security gate at Bank House is "not so much to keep people out as to keep us in" - he and his South African born wife Anita have a two-year-old daughter and another baby girl.