Midsummer Madness!

Exasperated by the loss of fundraising opportunities caused by almost 15 months of lockdown and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the College’s 125th Anniversary plans, in this the College’s 126th year, Fundraising Manager Mike Herbert is on Midsummer’s Day going to cycle 127 miles from Liverpool to Leeds following the Leeds-Liverpool canal. In one day.
Mike’s 125km Wealdway Walk last year raised £15,000 for the College. Please help him raise as much as possible this time around by sponsoring him at www.justgiving.com/campaign/midsummermadness

And more exciting information …

The College has teamed up with Charitable Travel as part of our fundraising and marketing activities.
Charitable Travel is a social enterprise created to help people book fantastic holidays at great prices, and to help raise money for charities. When you book your holiday, whether that’s a staycation in the UK or something further afield, you can donate 5% of your holiday price to College of St. Barnabas at no extra cost to you! Once the donation has been made, Charitable Travel discount the cost of your holiday by the same 5%, sacrificing the commission that travel agencies make. Charitable Travel sell worldwide ATOL protected holidays from 200 suppliers, and are a member of the Travel Trust Association, so their customers are always financially protected. Find out more at charitable.travel/college-of-st-barnabas or call the team of agents on 020 3092 1288. Please do consider booking with Charitable Travel and share this link with your family and friends. Not only are Charitable Travel competitively priced, but every purchase made through them will help our fundraising effort.

We are pleased to say that since 8th March we have been able to have visits for all our residents with their nominated visitors, and this continues along with government guidelines. We are grateful to all our visitors for adhering to the regulations and keeping our residents safe.

Updated 13th May 2021

Please read our 2020 Christmas Appeal letter which can be read by clicking on this link.

If you wish, you can always donate through our JustGiving page.

Thank you.

Please be assured that the College has taken all necessary measures to protect the health and well-being of our Residents and staff during these challenging times. These include making the difficult decision to close the College to all but essential visitors, including family visits, and non-essential external trips for our Residents. In addition we have implemented a social distancing policy throughout the College.

These decisions have not been taken lightly but with the health and well-being of our Residents and staff as our priority. We will continue to monitor and follow all Government guidelines.

Thank you for your help and understanding in these difficult times. Please feel free to call the College on 01342 870260 if you have any concerns.

The College of St Barnabas 1895 – 2020 : 125 years of caring for Anglicans

This year marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the College of St. Barnabas by a former Missionary, Canon William Cooper, who spent most of his ministry in New Zealand, in the Australian outback and in the wilderness of Canada before returning in poverty and poor health to the UK. He pleaded with CMS in vain for help, describing himself as “a broken man” as a result of the physical hardships he had endured. Back in Britain, he came across other former missionaries and older Clergy living in abject poverty and ill-health, most notably in the Brighton Workhouse, and he determined to do something to alleviate their suffering.

The College is financially independent of the Church of England, and pre-dates Church of England Pensions Board Homes. This independence means we have to actively raise funds in order to achieve our charitable aims and objectives, and our 125th anniversary gives a great opportunity both to increase awareness of the College and to bring in some cash. A number of events are being planned throughout 2020 to mark this impressive milestone.

Mike Herbert, the College’s Head of Fundraising, is leading by example and doing a 125km sponsored walk from Gravesend to Eastbourne at the end of March, whilst another member of the staff will be cycling 125 miles along the Pilgrim’s Way later in the year. Says Mike “ the College does a great job in helping vulnerable elderly people in need”. He continues “It is clearly worth supporting, and because of the continuing demand it needs our help as much now as it ever did in Cooper’s day”.

If you would like to help the College by sponsoring Mike, you can do so online by clicking on JustGiving. Thank you.

Our Christmas Appeal is now live on JustGiving 

We care for people like Peggy – the widow of a Clergyman – pictured below celebrating her 100th birthday at the College, and have been doing so for almost 125 years. We also care for people like Fr. Barry Thorley, pictured below, and for many other older, elderly, frail and vulnerable Anglicans in need.

Fr. Barry’s journey took him from his parish in multicultural Brixton to inner city Birmingham and then to Africa where he led a monastic life in Zanzibar, Senegal and Ghana, and ultimately via Bosnia to the College of St. Barnabas where, he says, he discovered that God left the best wine until last. In his lifetime Barry has experienced the heartache of being abandoned by his father, a black wartime GI, and the intense highs and lows of being an inner city priest, carrying out extensive work with young black people in the Handsworth area of Birmingham and viewing at first hand police harassment, death, drugs, crime, violence and riots, as well as experiencing the intense heartbreak of a lost love and a 7-year rift with the Church because of his sexuality.

In Africa he sunk wells, had a brush with Mugabe’s secret police and lived as a monk, building a hermitage on the Ashanti plain in Ghana, where he lived and explored his longing after God until ill-health forced his return to the UK, via the mountains of Central Bosnia.

Barry came to the College at a time of great personal need. Milked of his pensions during his time in Africa, and diagnosed with myeloma on his return to the UK, he quite literally had nowhere to go. Fortunately the College was able to help, providing Fr. Barry with a secure, safe environment in which to manage his illness and the space to pray in what he describes as a serious religious community.

In fact, it was precisely for Clergy like Fr Barry – priests returning penniless and in poor health after years of missionary work and ministry overseas, with no-one to turn to – that the College was established all those years ago. Time may moved on, but as Fr. Barry’s plight so clearly illustrates, the need is still there.

Indeed, we are as busy as we have ever been, helping some of the frailest and most vulnerable older and elderly people in the community, not just with the basics of care and accommodation, but with fellowship, a sense of being a valued part of a community and with a strong emphasis on engagement, involvement and social welfare.

The demand and need for the services we provide is unrelenting, and that is precisely why we need your help, to enable us to care for those who come to us as the provider of last resort, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.

Only you know what is right for you to give, but please do help our residents by giving as generously as you can.

You can donate by clicking on this JustGiving link. Thank you so much, in advance, for your kind and generous support. 

The College of St Barnabas reaches its 125th anniversary of foundation next year, and will be holding its first Heritage Open Day on Saturday, September 21st from 10.00 to 16.00.

Visitors will have a chance to visit one of Surrey’s hidden treasures, the College of St Barnabas, a late Victorian home for retired Anglicans, set up by Canon William Cooper to ‘rescue’ clergy who had been abandoned in Victorian workhouses. Gain insight into the ongoing story of this fascinating place with tours of the College taking place in the Libraries, Refectory, and Chapels, including one with pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Plenty of entertainment for all the family with a miniature steam railway, model railway, a variety of talks, displays and ‘pop-up’ performances by the Collective, a diverse choir – and more. Refreshments will be available throughout the day.

Click here to view our poster and please re-visit the website for further information and updates over the next few weeks …

Christmas Appeal from Timothy West and our Request for your Help

Like you, I am proud to support the work of the College of St. Barnabas and was therefore delighted to be asked to play a part in their 2018 Christmas Appeal. 

I feel fortunate to have visited the College on a number of occasions, to have met some of the Residents and, indeed, to have had the chance to get together with some of our fellow supporters.

I discovered that those of us who help the College are always as amazed as I am at just how efficiently the College goes about its business of caring for some of the oldest, frailest and most vulnerable people in the Anglican community with such respect, with such compassion and in such dignity.

Like many other supporters of the College, I have over the past year been truly inspired by Fr. George Wood’s incredible story of courage and survival and I take personal pride in the fact that we – as College supporters – are able to help George and other College Residents in their time of need.

I feel a sense of privilege to be in some small way a part of and connected to this truly unique caring community whose dedicated staff and volunteers are able, thanks to committed help from ourselves as supporters, to make a huge difference to the lives of the elderly Church people in their care.

I hope that you, too, feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in knowing that it is only our help that makes possible this amazing and incredibly important work to care for those most in need. Through the help we give we are transforming the lives of people in need, and the College relies on our increasing fundraising help more than ever if it is to keep pace with present day demand.

That’s why, as a fellow supporter of the College, I’m proud to put my name to the request to you for your help, which you can read on our JustGiving page and donate easily at the same time.  Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Yours very sincerely,