Just along the road from our church there is a very impressive looking building: built to last, as they say. I imagine that it is a listed building and, therefore, must stand for evermore as a testimony to Victorian building skills. Part of it housed Sharoe Green Hospital, which was the town’s maternity hospital: a place of new life and hope for the future. However, it was built as the area’s workhouse, grand on the outside and grim within! It was the place where many of the poor and elderly ended their days, in conditions in which our Victorian forefathers should take no pride! The workhouse cast a long shadow over the lives of many of the labouring classes, who feared the future when they could no longer work.

Methodism has always placed importance on service to the community. In 1937 Rev. Walter Hall gathered together a group of friends in an attempt to find a solution to the problem of accommodation for vulnerable, elderly people, and to provide an alternative to the workhouse. These friends included Mrs Hilda Bartlett Lang, wife of Rev. Fred Bartlett Lang (who ran the Joseph Rank Benevolent Trust) and Sir George Martin, a Yorkshire layman who was much involved in public affairs. Their aim was to provide decent homes, thus saving folk from the misery of the workhouse, and in 1943 Methodist Homes for the Aged (MHA) was formed. The first home, Ryelands in Wallington, Surrey, was opened in 1945; the second Berwick Grange, in Harrogate, Yorkshire, in 1946 and by the end of the 1950 a further six were in operation.

During the 1970s the concept of ‘sheltered housing’ was growing. Older people wished to retain their independence but felt that they could no longer manage to live in their own homes. In 1977 MHA founded a Housing Association and built St Andrew’s Court in 1981. Towards the end of the decade MHA initiated the Live at Home Scheme in Lichfield, Staffordshire. This aimed to support people who lived at home but felt isolated; it was concerned with improving the quality of life by providing opportunites for friendship, outings etc. In the late eighties MHA pioneered a ‘person-centred approach’ to dementia care at Westbury Grange, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, and in 1989 the first nursing care home was opened: Trembaths, Letchworth in Hertfordshire. In 2009, MHA set up a retirement village, Auchlochan Garden Village in South Lanarkshire, with a wide range of services. There are cottages, apartments and care homes set in woodlands and gardens and among lochans.

The nearest home to Fulwood is Starr Hills, at Ansdell, Lytham St. Annes.

"I want your support in a scheme to find a house which we can use for some of these people. It won’t be easy. The time is not ripe for this adventure. And it will cost money. Are you prepared to back such a plan?"

They were and they did! Workhouses, thank God, are things of the past. Times and expectations have changed. MHA’s vision and ethos, however, still echoes that of the founders. Happy 70^th Birthday, MHA!