New opening
Luxury care in Bath: Hallmark takes the plunge
The Care Home Environment editor Matt Seex visited Hallmark Luxury Care Homes’ Midford Manor in historic Bath, Somerset, to learn about the importance the award-winning provider places on forging strong, lasting links with the local community, and to take an in-depth tour of this stunning new home
The city of Bath in Somerset boasts a history of human activity and settlement going back thousands of years. Established by the Romans as a spa town around 60 AD, and now famous both for its hot springs and distinctive Georgian architecture, Bath was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and now hosts some six million visitors every year.
On the last Wednesday of March, I made my way along the M4 through rather changeable weather (including – for a slightly surreal ten minutes – a flurry of snow) to Midford Manor in Bath, to meet with Hallmark’s Sally Patterson (customer relationship manager) and Verity Prentice (PR manager) to discuss the location and build of Hallmark’s new Somerset care home and the provider’s forward-thinking approach to forging strong and lasting community links wherever it decides to open one of its award-winning luxury homes.
Expansion without compromise Recently rebranded as Hallmark Luxury Care Homes, the award-winning provider has been enjoying a robust expansion of late. Last June saw the grand opening of Angmering Grange in West Sussex, a beautiful state-of-the-art home that The Care Home Environment visited for our September 2023 issue. More recently, in April, Hallmark opened the £21.6m, 85-bed Hallmark Willingdon Park Manor in Eastbourne, and the provider has also acquired a 1.78-acre site in Cardiff, Wales, where construction is set to begin in 2025 on Hallmark’s 26th care home. Located three miles from the centre of Bath on the site of a former car park, close to St Martin’s Hospital, a Sainsbury’s, and a wealth of local transport links, Midford Manor has been open to residents for nearly six months. In common with many other
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care home builds, completion of the £22m project came in slightly overbudget and subject to a modest delay, but Hallmark was adamant that the home would open only when it met the provider’s very exacting standards. With a number of residents signed up and eager to make Midford Manor their home, Hallmark made the decision to delay the official launch of the home. As Verity tells me: “We actually
postponed the launch of the home so that [the residents] could have a really good moving in experience. Traditionally, we would have the launch of the home before the residents move in … but because we had such a queue of people wanting to move in,
We felt that this was a really great spot for us – where we could bring the Hallmark brand and really do this area justice
and we were slightly delayed with the build, we wanted to make sure they had a really good moving in experience. “We allowed a few months for that to take place, then we scheduled the launch, and we included [the residents] in the launch, so we made it more about a celebration for them and their families. It was nice include them, and for them to enjoy the entertainment.” Sally concurs: “It felt lovely for our residents because their children and their grandchildren came. One of the residents came to me and said: ‘can I show people around?’ They were so proud of their home. We included them right from the start.” On the day of my visit, occupancy stood at 30, with a couple of residents moving in each week. While Hallmark expects Midford Manor to be at capacity – meaning some 80 residents – in around 12 months, the focus from the outset has been on making sure that each incoming resident feels welcomed and special. “While we had a queue of residents
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com May 2024
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