Three latin words have been attractively ‘V’ cut into the stone over the entrance to the showroom that has just been opened by Melbury Stone in Melbury Abbas, Dorset. They translate as: I came I saw I bought.

Many of the distinctive stones of the British Isles tend to be used predominantly fairly close to the area they are quarried and help define that area. Shaftesbury green sandstone is just such a stone and has been used in many of the important, as well as some of the more modest buildings of Shaftesbury ever since the Saxon abbey started the trend in 880.

It is even now being used to build houses in Shaftsbury itself, thanks in part to the insistence of the planners. Historically, the greenstone has also been carried down the River Stour as far as Wimborne and Sturminster Newton – the Sturminster Newton church is built of it.

Elsewhere it has been used in conjunction with other stones, such as flint at Ashmore and Purbeck limestone further South. It has gone as far as Hastings in Sussex and the Isle of Wight, where it is a good match for the local stone. But mostly it is used within a 10 mile radius of Shaftesbury.

That is why Melbury Greenstone Ltd, the company David Fear set up to process and sell Shaftesbury greenstone products in 2001, fairly quickly moved into the processing of other British stones, notably, but not exclusively, Portland, Bath and Cotswold limestones. As it did so, it also started trading as Melbury Stone rather than Greenstone.

Ideally, perhaps, Melbury Stone would continue to process and sell British stones exclusively but, says David Fear, as his company’s interiors market grew people were asking why his floor and wall tiles were £100 a square metre when in high street shops stone tiles might be £30 a square metre or even less. David was happy to explain but he was losing sales because some people just wanted a lower price.

Then David’s son, Joe, who has now also joined the business, saw a potential to expand sales of stone fireplaces. Melbury Stone has always made fireplaces to order as required, but Joe felt there was a business to be developed in designing and offering off-the-shelf fireplaces as well.

Seeing slabs in a factory or tiles in a crate does not always provide the inspiration necessary to achieve a sale. The products need to be displayed in something similar to a domestic setting to appeal to that part of the market.

Melbury Stone did have a showroom connected to its factory but customers were not encouraged to visit it. Katharine Fear, David’s wife, admits it was not a great marketing asset and visitors had to negotiate their way through the muddy factory yard to reach it.

So the family decided to create a new showroom separated from the factory and, for the first time, to extend the company’s repertoire to include imported stone floor and wall tiles. The result is shown in the pictures on these pages. David says it has ended up even better than they had originally envisaged. “As it went along we kept having new ideas.”

The showroom has been given a more homely look by the inclusion of sculptures (in stone, of course) and paintings by local artists Mike Chapman, Pippa Unwin, and Roger Denton.

While much of the stone inside is now imported, the hard landscaping outside is still British stone and as you drive up to the showroom you can hardly ask for a better display of Shaftesbury Greenstone than the wall and gateposts in front you.

You might also notice a wind turbine in the distance and, although you cannot see it, there is also a field of photoelectric cells next to the factory. The wind turbine can produce up to 12kW of electricity and the solar panels up to 100kW, so on a sunny, windy day the two schemes produce almost enough electricity to meet all the needs of the business.

The schemes were up and running the day before the feed in tariff was reduced – “There was a bit of stress that week,” admits David – with the work being carried out even though there was no planning permission for it in order to hit the feed in tariff deadline. Planning permission was obtained retrospectively.

The machinery in the factory that the green electricity is driving includes a 2.7m Hensel primary saw, a 1600mm Gilbert, a Van Voorden profiler and a 1200mm Wells Wellcut. There are also two lathes, bought for making columns but now also making bottle shaped stone wine racks and urn planters. There is a cropping line currently producing walling for some major Persimmon housing projects under way in Shaftesbury.

David says Melbury Stone has suffered along with the rest of the world from the economy but that the opening of the new showroom is spreading the opportunities for sales by expanding the product range. “It’s a bolt on to what we were already doing; a natural progression.”

He believes the market is picking up now and that the past 12 months were an improvement on the previous 12. He says it is still “a bit feast or famine” but that he has work for the next three months and that is as much as he has become used to.

Of course, the aim is to bring in a bit more work from the new showroom, as is expressed by that Latin phrase over the door – veni vide emi. Many visitors might be familiar with the first two words from the phrase attributed to Julius Caesar (veni vide vici – I came I saw I conquered). They might struggle to translate the final word. David, Catherine and Joe hope they won’t struggle with the sentiment – ‘I bought’.