Tour & FAQs
Virtual tours and some answers to our most frequently asked questions about coworking and Purple Office in Dorchester, Dorset.
Watch our Getting Started video to learn how to sign up, use the app to make bookings and access the office any time.
Coworking is sharing a workspace with other businesses, organisations, or individuals, flexibly. Unlike traditional offices that are tied down to set hours and set desks, a coworking space allows you to start and finishing working in the shared workspace when you please, with the ability to choose where you sit.
Most shared offices are serviced, meaning you gain access to the likes of fast Wi-Fi, free printing, free coffee & tea, and of course, electricity and heating as part of your hourly cost or monthly membership. This means that working in a coworking space can be cheaper and offer a better alternative than purchasing or renting an office depending on your business size and needs.
There are a multitude of benefits to coworking including improved networking, lowers costs, included services, flexibility, increased productivity and more. You can find out more in our blog post “Key Benefits to a Shared Office Space“.
A serviced office is a term closely related to coworking. Serviced offices are fully furnished with furniture, facilities, and technology needed for startups, small businesses, and corporates to work successfully. Some of these facilities may include tea & coffee, printing, Wi-Fi, meeting rooms, and parking.
These services are included in the price you are paying, so you don’t need to worry about receiving any unexpected costs or deal with the overheads and planning of setting up an office yourself.
We open from 7am to 10pm daily to accommodate most people’s office space needs. Due to our location and typical amount of customers, we cannot sustainably staff the office for 15 hours a day. We intended Purple Office to be a self-service office space which is why access and bookings are managed by our app. To ensure that everybody who uses Purple Office can feel safe and secure (especially when sharing the space with others), we require an ID check to be completed by all members. In this way, we know for sure exactly who everybody is, and you can feel comfortable leaving your laptop and other personal belongings in the space if you want to pop out for lunch or for a walk. We use Stripe as our identity provider. The photograph of your ID is checked by Stripe’s automated systems for validity, and we only receive a simple yes/no to verify your account. We do not store photographs of your ID after the check is complete.
We have loads of free, unrestricted parking in Poundbury. Roads are wide, so roadside parking is really easy.
There are 4 regular spaces and 1 disabled space right outside our front door.
If these are full, you can park anywhere roadside along Crown Street West (our road) and most of the surrounding residential roads, with no time restrictions and zero parking fees. It’s totally free.
As we’re on a new development, car sat-navs may not recognise our postcode.
Tap these links to open Google Maps or Apple Maps on your smartphone for directions.
The address is:
6 Crown Square, Poundbury, Dorset DT1 3EN
If you are the statue at Queen Mother Square (Duchess of Cornwall pub, Waitrose etc), head down the hill towards Dorchester. Take the second left at Damers School onto Liscombe Street. Continue all the way to the end of this road and turn right onto Crown Street West. Purple Office is on your right, in the corner of Crown Square. We have clear signs outside.
The Coffee Lounge cafe is a 1 minute walk up Crown Street West (turn left out of the office) serving food and drink.
Continue past the Coffee Lounge in a straight line a further 3 minutes to reach Queen Mother Square for Waitrose, the Duchess of Cornwall (Hall & Woodhouse) pub, and Olives et Al cafe and deli among others.
Around 10 minutes’ walk are Finca, Bonjour Cafe, and numerous other cafes and eateries all around Poundbury.
We can provide catering for your meetings thanks to numerous cafes, patisseries and restaurants around Poundbury.
Please complete our Contact Form and add a little note in the “How can we help?” field telling us what you fancy and for what day/time, and for how many people.
Cooked and continental breakfasts, pastries, finger buffets for lunch and tea, and various cakes and patisserie are all possible.
We provide premium Clipper teas (with instant boiling water on tap) and Nespresso coffee in our fully fitted kitchen, included in the price.
All our services are pay-as-you-go. It’s possible to manage all your bookings directly through our simple, web-based online booking app.
Click or tap here to open our app in a new tab, or visit purpleoffice.co.uk/app
Our app allows you to:
As you arrive on the day:
Our app homepage tells you how many people are in the office right now, and which seats are reserved, so you can decide before you leave if it’s too busy for you (or just busy enough!).
You can book ahead to guarantee your preferred seat or area, using our simple web-based online booking app:
Click or tap here to open our app in a new tab, or visit purpleoffice.co.uk/app
You can view our seats meeting room and pricing here.
You do NOT need to book if you don’t mind where you sit.
For an ad-hoc session without a booking:
You can do this any time, from right outside the door. Come in and sit wherever is available. The big screen will tell you if any seats have been reserved, so just avoid those.
We open from 7am to 10pm
As a relatively small space, we cannot staff the premises all day every day, but we do usually have staff around most days during working hours.
Our online booking app not only allows you to manage your bookings, but it also controls access to the office.
Click or tap here to open our app in a new tab, or visit purpleoffice.co.uk/app
Our music, lights and display screens all turn on and off automatically each day, and our cleaning team come in every morning before dawn to reset the office. So it’s all ready for you, whenever you arrive.
For help with using any of the equipment in the office including the kitchen, refer to our Customer Support pages here. We have a full range of alternative and regular milks for tea and coffee, in addition to carafes of ready-chilled water prepared fresh every morning in our drinks fridge at the end of the breakfast island – help yourself.
Our coffee is a Nespresso pod system, just ensure the water is topped up, lift the lever, drop in the pod, close the lever and push the button (you may need to push twice if the machine is sleeping – when the button lights stop flashing, it’s ready to dispense).
We also have a milk warmer / frother which does 3 different consistencies of frothed milk for the perfect flat white, latte or cappuccino. Watch the video at our customer support pages.
For tea, you’re equally well-covered with a range of premium Clipper teas and our instant boiling water Quooker tap. For boiling water, just double-tap and twist the collar. Watch out, it is really boiling. Watch the video at our customer support page and you’ll soon get the hang of it.
We have super-fast full fibre broadband up to 300Mbps delivered by the latest Wi-Fi technology.
Check the signage in the office and at the front door for the Wi-Fi network name and password.
You can also scan the special QR code on the signs from your smartphone or tablet to connect instantly, no need to type anything in!
We are dog friendly but you and your pooch will need to abide by some basic guidelines.
🐶 Must be well behaved and quiet
🐶 Must stay at your desk
🐶 Cannot enter the meeting room
🐶 Must stay off chairs
🐶 Please be conscious of other office users
If issues occur, we may ask you to refrain from bringing in your dog, or we may choose to not permit dogs altogether.
Book a meeting room or schedule a few hours in our lovely office space for next time you need to get out of the house, or when you’re next passing through Dorchester.
© Purple Office 2023
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