Home care company brings one of Kendal’s oldest buildings fully back to life

A Kendal-based homecare company has spent more than £250,000 to refurbish and bring fully back to life one of Kendal’s oldest buildings.

Westmorland Homecare has just opened its new central hub at 18 Highgate after a building project lasting around 17 months.

It will serve as offices for 16 administrative staff, a base for the company’s home care assistants, a state-of-the-art training centre and somewhere people can easily visit to talk about the needs of members of their family.

And, when Covid-19 restrictions allow, it could also become a place for GPs and healthcare professionals to do Continuing Professional Development training.

One of the rooms has been fully furbished as a bedroom, complete with equipment such as standing aids and ceiling hoists. Volunteers will act as elderly and frail clients so that new staff who have never done home care work before can learn how to look after people in a realistic environment before they are introduced to real clients.

“It has been a real pleasure bringing to life a 500-year-old building which will now support and help look after our team,” said Dr Chris Moss, one of the directors of Westmorland Homecare. “We wanted to create a hub right in the heart of our community for finding out about health and social care and where people can be trained.”

Westmorland Homecare provides hundreds of hours of care each week to enable elderly and often frail people to live independently in their own home.

Dr Moss and Dr Joshua Macauley acquired 18 Highgate in 2017 when they set up the company. During its long history the building has served as a coaching house for the adjacent Ye Olde Fleece Inn, has been run as a greengrocer by Webbs and as a Wimpy bar.

“We thought it was in an amazing location,” said Dr Moss. “It is a Grade Two Listed Building and has a story to tell – over the years it has been there to help people in various ways and that very much ties in with the underlying ethos of Westmorland Homecare. But it had been empty for six years and we had a vision to turn it into a really fantastic building,”

Some initial work was carried out, but the company quickly outgrew the useable space available and so staff moved temporarily to offices above Kendal Post Office while planning permission was sought to carry out extensive, but sensitive, refurbishments.

“We wanted to bring the building fully back to life,” said Dr Moss. “Living life to the full is what we are about in our business.”

The company and its building contractor, Goodson Developments of Kendal, worked closely with conservation officers. Some of the funding for the works came from a European Union grant through The Cumbria Fells and Dales LEADER project.

New staircases, windows and skylights were installed, ceiling heights raised on the first floor and a steel frame had to be built within the old building due to the structural integrity of the existing stonework. “We effectively build a building within a building,” said Dr Moss.

“We worked hard to preserve the original features, such as stonework, while ensuring the building met the latest thermal efficiency standards, which involved installing a new eco heating system and thick insulation.

“There is a beautiful interior design using Laura Ashley products. It does not feel like an office – from the moment you walk in it feels like a home and that ties in with our aim to look after and care for our clients and staff as best we can. We want our staff to feel relaxed and working and training in a lovely environment helps. We have made sure it is a very special place.”

The building, which stretches 80 metres back from its Highgate frontage, now contains office space, meeting and training rooms and the full bedroom used for teaching new members of staff about caring for clients.

Staff moved into 18 Highgate on Monday, March 1 following full COVID risk assessments. Dr Moss said Westmorland Homecare was looking forward to showing people around the new facilities when COVID restriction rules permitted.

In the meantime, he said the company would love to hear from anyone who was thinking of a new job in care. Anyone interested should telephone 01539 725107.