SHELTERED housing residents in Wellington will again be able to share a dining room together from next week for the first time in three years.

Staff in the Abbeyfield Society’s Old Vicarage have been working for the past month to bring the home’s communal dining room back into use.

And on Wednesday the Mayor of Wellington, Cllr Mark Lithgow, will perform the official reopening ceremony for residents of the 29 flats.

Senior house manager Becks South said: “Since 2020 during the pandemic we have had to keep the dining room closed.

“Instead, we have been taking dinners and evening meals to the residents’ doors for them to eat in their flats.

Abbeyfield Society Old Vicarage Wellington dining room
Abbeyfield cook Toni Brewer and student volunteer Bradley Marshal painting the dining room walls. ( )

“All the food is cooked in our kitchen adjoining the dining room so it is all good quality, home made meals for them.”

House manager Clare Scholes said: “Part of the Abbeyfield ethos is to remove loneliness, but having the residents stuck in their rooms eating was not helping with that.”

The dining room renovation was boosted by volunteer Bradley Marshall, who has been attending a painting and decorating course in Somerset College, Taunton, and wanted to help.

As well as lunch and evening meals, the room will be used for social activities such as ‘Flexercise’, which is chair-bound exercise, and Easter competitions, and Abbeyfield hopes to be able to host the nearby St John’s School choir again at Christmas after an absence since before Covid.