No One Alone at Christmas 2024 was held at Sherwell Church Hall, North Hill, Plymouth on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2024. The Christmas season can be both joyous and sad. It is a time for families and friends to come together and have wonderful celebrations. But it is also a time for those on their own to feel very isolated and lonely. No One Alone at Christmas 2024 brought over 80 people together on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, to have a wonderful time, sharing food, meeting new friends and just having fun. It was deemed a great success.

Park Pharmacy Trust is holding a drop-in open evening from 1830 on Wednesday 18 April 2018 at Thorn Park Lodge. Come and see the pharmaceutical museum and library, reminisce over items that used to be on sale in old fashioned chemist shops and have a go at pill rolling or tube end crimping. See the medicinal garden and join the Thorn Park Lodge and Garden Community Group.  And learn how you can hire the lodge (or apply for grants) to run regular or one-off community meetings. The trust is thrilled at the number of young people who love the garden and hopes that they will want to form their own group to work in the garden and run events.

The Head of Legal Services at Plymouth City Council has written to say that “this is now the end of the debt issue as far at the Council is concerned and no further action is required”. The trust had offered to donate the C J Park pharmacy collection to Plymouth City Council, Arts and Heritage  but the offer was turned down on the grounds that “there are no plans to include it in the galleries of the history centre and storage would be an issue”.

What this means for Park Pharmacy Trust is that it is now free to apply for grants for projects at Thorn Park Lodge and garden. And, at last it can start its ambitious plan for the development of Plymouth Health Science Exploratory which will include a completely rebuilt walk in old fashioned chemist shop, Mr Park’s chemist. This was the last remaining family pharmacy shop in Plymouth, which closed on Mutley Plain in 1983 and had been a wonderful visitor attraction when it was in the Merchant’s House Museum manned by trust volunteers.
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What is needed more than anything now are people. People with their own ideas for projects at Thorn Park Lodge or to work in the medicinal garden and to show visitors around the museum in the lodge. The lodge can be the venue for local groups including friends of Mutley Park and Thorn Park, for morning breakfast clubs or after school clubs, coffee mornings even craft clubs. The trust is planning to raise money to employ an organiser to work with volunteers and discover who in the area would love to have an opportunity to come to Thorn Park Lodge, see the museum and garden and stay and have a chat over a cup of tea or coffee. Loneliness is something the trust wants to actively do something about and we believe the ambience of Thorn Park Lodge combined with years of experience of knowing how to help people feel wanted and valued will be at the heart of this project. And the project will include some outreach work in residential homes where we know our long- tested approach to recall and reminiscence:  No matter how bitter the pill, the memories of it are sweet, really works.  

If any of this tempts you to find out more or get involved then please send us an email to: [email protected], telephone 01752 263 501 or 01752 565 676 or come along on Wednesday 18 April and find out more.  

We are pleased to announce that the garden at Thorn Park Lodge was featured on ITV News West Country News.  They produced a great news section, which you can watch below.

Park Pharmacy Trust photos featured in the Plymouth Herald: Click