Corby’s Lakelands Hospice Emporium re-opens after much-needed refurbishment

The Lakelands Hospice Emporium in Corby’s town centre has re-opened after receiving a much-needed refurbishment.

The emporium, located in New Post Office Square, is a charity shop as well as a restaurant and café.

It was officially opened in October 2007, six years after the day care hospice opened in 2001.

It has been in much need of refurbishment for some time now, and new board of trustees member Karen Govier, who also volunteers in the Emporium, took it upon herself to get it done.

Karen said: “At my very first board meeting I said, ‘the thing I want to get done is the shop because it really does need it.

“It’s been an eight day project, so people have been giving up their time from all different walks of life. From within Wincaton, we’ve had people from London, Chippenham, Birmingham, from our sites in Wellingborough, all over Northamptonshire, people have come from everywhere to give their time because anyone who knows anything about Corby knows about the importance of Lakelands.

“Laklelands means everything to this town, it’s a very special place.

“I’m blown away, blown away by the generosity of people’s time and spirit and effort because everyone’s actually just got on with it and got stuck in and did us proud.

“I’m immensely proud of it all. I don’t think it could have looked any better.

"We’ve managed to get much more done than we’d hoped. We’ve done the shop, the office, the kitchen, the corridor, the ladies and the gents toilets, an amazing feat of work in eight days.”

Wincanton chose Lakelands as their charity of the year for 2024.

Through Wincanton, Karen arranged vehicles to get the materials/stock out of the store during the refurbishment.

They also provided volunteers from across all of their sites in Northamptonshire to completely repaint the 500sq ft emporium and put up additional shelving.

Along with Wincaton, many other organisations helped to get the refurbishment completed.

They include All That Platters, Butterfly Legacy Project, Corby Cleaning Company, Crown Decorating Centres, Ikea, MR Security and Cleaning Services, Maintenance Services Electrical, EBM Electrical and B&Q.

The project encompassed 112 volunteers who dedicated 568 hours between them.

Many people were in attendance for the re-opening of the emporium. A familiar face to all customers there, Angie Cherry, has worked there since day one.

Angie said: “This is my baby, this is my pride and joy, so when Karen said ‘let’s give it a revamp’ it was a bit daunting but it needed it so bad.

“When we started it was very daunting but as the days went on we’ve had right good fun, everybody’s worked so hard and well you can see it’s just amazing now.

“We are like a little community hub here, we’ve got a lot of old customers, we’ve getting a load of new customers coming in, we try and keep it cheap and cheerful, everybody knows us when they come in, we have a good laugh, it really is a pleasure to work here.”

An Easter trail for children has also been planned which costs £1 per child. Those taking part can collect a sheet from the Emporium between April 4 and April 23, excluding Sundays, and follow the clues.