Staff at Lionmouth Rural Centre started work on their £10,000 woodland project, adjacent to their Broadgate Farm site, located between Esh Winning and Ushaw Moor, last spring.
The freemen’s charitable trustees initially pledged £1,000 towards the woodland development but last autumn promised a further £3,000 to help underwrite costs of the wooden tea room, destined to meet fresh public demand at the centre’s thriving plant nursery.
More that two dozen local people aged from their teens to mid-60s - some struggling to cope with social or learning difficulties, others suffering or recovering from mental health issues - attend the centre. They are supported by two full-time and three part-time staff, backed by a team of 16 volunteers.
The attendees are offered day care support and training in woodwork, horticultural, art, pottery, cookery and conservation.
A once overgrown plot at the centre containing trees and shrubs - some of them rare - are now embraced within the new managed woodland venture. The development work, tackled by staff and clients, offers public access along a featured pathway now lined by scented plants and shrubs and leading into an open glade with seating, benches which enojoy a view of the nearby River Deerness.
The addition of a tea room was dovetailed into the project to meet “consistent and continuing demand” from visitors dropping into the nursery.
Centre manager Brigid Press explained: “We had a thriving tea room before Covid but were forced us to close it down. We then had to utilize that area to provide chairs, desks and sufficient space for clients to allow us to re-open. Now clients have been reluctant to give up their own little pieces of territory and the change happily works better by allowing us to take on more clients.”
She admits the new wood-built tea room in the trees – with its own power supply - will be a scaled down version of the original. But it will have additional seating, as well as a gazebo providing shelter.
Although operating with an element of self-service the tea room will be staffed by some of the day-care users who will cook and bake the produce they will be serving.
“Those involved will be playing a larger public-facing role than they have in the past and will be trained and certified in food safety before starting,” added Brigid.
Eric Bulmer, chairman of the freemen’s trustees, said: “Once again the Lionmouth staff, supported by its many volunteers, have demonstrated their enthusiasm and dedication to continue developing the site for the benefit of its vulnerable clients, local community and visitors.”
