Herriot Hospice@The Lambert: Meet the women determined to tackle North Yorkshire's lack of hospices

The renovation, renewal and imminent reopening of Thirsk’s much-loved former Lambert Memorial Hospital as Herriot Hospice@The Lambert will go some way to helping alleviate a little of that dearth.

Support from the Lambert League of Friends, the former Hambleton District Council and a few grant bodies, has been more than matched by the vigour, enthusiasm and hard work of groups, organisations and individuals who continue to find ways of raising much needed funds and a group of countryside ladies, now known as Thirsk Friends of the Lambert Hospice have raised over £80,000 since starting their campaign with a weekend cake shop in Thirsk in July last year and have their latest event coming up next month.

“We are a group of friends who got together about 18 months ago,” says Sara Haigh, whose husband has had cancer for 25 years.

“He’s a walking medical miracle, but I’ve lost two sisters to cancer. One who died in a hospice and one who didn’t. That’s why I really wanted to help. A hospice is so important for that twenty-four seven specialist care. That’s why I’m so passionate about our group and what we do.”

“I lost my dad five years ago to prostate cancer,” says farmer’s wife Holly Fawcett, who farms at the bottom of Sutton Bank, whose dad was also a farmer and whose mum Dawn Smith is chair of the committee, which has recently expanded to eleven from its original eight.

“I’m a care consultant and for me to have had somewhere I could go and knock on the door would have been much better than what I actually had. When Herriot Hospice were pushing that they needed to raise £300,000 in a weekend last year the eight of us got together.

“Our first effort started with the idea of selling cakes off a stall in Thirsk market, but thanks to the Calvert Carpets family gifting their property for the weekend we had our own pop-up cake shop on Finkle Street. We raised £23,000 as our £11,500 in cake sales was match funded by £11,500.”

Sara, whose parents farmed at Yafforth, says that the response to the request for cake making from ladies who have mainly grown up in the countryside was unequivocal and a reminder of how life used to be, and that the response from those who came along to purchase was nothing short of amazing.

“When you tell a farmer’s wife, we’re having a cake shop can you do some baking, the immediate response isn’t I’ll do you a dozen, it’s I’ll do 100 meringues or 25 Victoria sponges.

"Country ladies have always been good at baking, which was fantastic and the real start of it for us. I wouldn’t have said we were a committee at that point, we were a group of friends who wanted to do something.

“What we have realised since, with other fundraising events we have organised, that as a team everybody brings something. We have just recruited more members as we recognised what we are doing is getting bigger and we need more help and support.

“With what we did in raising funds Herriot Hospice came to us and said would we be their Thirsk Friends of the Lambert Hospice, a name we came up with between us.”

The name has particular poignancy for one member of the group, Mary Smith.

“Mary’s parents Watson and Ruby Bateman were always very supportive of Lambert Hospital and were involved with a previous group Friends of The Lambert Hospital,” says Holly.

“Grandma Ruby used to go into the hospital well into her nineties and give people cups of tea in bed to people 20 years her junior.

“The Friends of The Lambert Hospital (FOTLH) raised an awful lot of money which had just been sat there and has now been gifted to be used as part of our funds. Mary is as committed to carry on as were her parents. There are others, still in Thirsk, that were members of FOTLH who are still very active and supportive.”

The Lambert Memorial Hospital was founded by Sowerby lady Sarah Lambert in 1890 gifting the property to be used for healthcare. Her husband’s father William Lambert had been a doctor.

The 14-bed, one ward cottage hospital closed permanently in 2016, having been closed temporarily in 2015 due to ‘mainly difficulties recruiting trained nurses’. The building was purchased from the NHS in 2019 following speculation the NHS was seeking to sell off the building privately.

“Herriot Hospice Homecare is a domicilliary care agency for people with terminal illness,” says Holly. “It has secured the Lambert to run that from there and the Herriot Hospice@The Lambert that’s opening will have six in-patient beds and offer a lot of support, bereavement counselling, bereavement education, all of what a hospice offers.

"It will form a community hub. It’s going to serve quite a large area of which Thirsk is in the middle.

“The hospice are only going to get 40 per cent of the actual money needed to keep everything going from the NHS. It will need to raise 60 per cent of its funding annually from fundraising.

“Our role, along with many others in the community, is to do just that. We’ve already raised over £80,000 through all sorts of events and our latest is our second shopping event to be held at a former dairy farm-turned wedding venue at High Brockholme Barns, Danby Wiske on Thursday September 26. We’ve over 50 independent businesses taking stalls so far and we are aiming for at least 500 attending.”

Tickets are just £5. Contact: [email protected] or Holly Fawcett 07703 299233 / Sara Haigh 07890 405159