A history of Abbeyfield and the Abbeyfield Perth Society
A scheme to bring lonely people together, in an ordinary house, in an ordinary street, getting support and creating an atmosphere of companionship from neighbours and family; returning to the community rather than moving away from it.
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Richard Carr-Gomm
This was Richard Carr-Gomm’s vision and mission when he started The Abbeyfield Society and continues to be the foundation for all the work we do to help alleviate loneliness; with our residents at the heart of everything we do.
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Homely and friendly houses that have established great links within their community, making time for our residents, and enhancing their lives by bringing everyone together remain at the core of what we stand for today.
Richard Carr-Gomm served in The Royal Berkshire Regiment and Coldstream Guards for 16 years before resigning and volunteering as Britain’s first male home help. In his work, he found that the needs of people he was looking after were not material, but that they were often lonely.
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Often the only person to visit them, he wanted to provide them with support and security. Using part of his Army gratuity, he bought his first house in 1955, located in Bermondsey, East London and invited his first residents from the local community, Miss Saunders and Mr Halnan, to live with him.
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​Thanks to the positive response from the first house, he used the rest of his gratuity money to buy a second house and as word spread and Richard began to receive donations from the public, he bought more houses and formally set up Abbeyfield in 1956.​
By 1963, Abbeyfield had over 100 homes across the UK with societies in eight London boroughs and 15 other cities throughout the country.
Abbeyfield now has over 400 houses in the UK and worldwide, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Jersey, South Africa and New Zealand. From Richard’s kindness, generosity and goodwill, he has helped to change the lives of thousands of people.
His idea of providing houses for residents to make friends, eat together, take part in activities, and to continue feeling part of the community are the same ideals you’ll find in our houses today.
Richards story
The Abbeyfield Perth Society was formed in 1961. Abbeyfield Perth has always been supported by an active group of staff and volunteers who play an important part in the successful running of the household.
The first Abbeyfield Perth house was named Rio, and was at 14 Dundee Road, Perth. It was described as a “very sheltered house” and consisted of 10 resident apartments, with a communal dining room, sitting room, conservatory, kitchen and laundry room. Each apartment had a bedroom area, a sitting room and small kitchen facility, just enough to make breakfast or cups of tea and snacks.
Each day the resident housekeeper made the lunches and evening meals which were served in the dining room so that everyone could socialise. Residents were generally fairly active, just wanting to have company, just like Richard Carr-Gomm’s vision.
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There was a very active “Executive Committee” and “Friends of Rio” group of volunteers. In those early days the only paid staff were the housekeeper, assistant housekeeper and a cleaner. The members of the Executive Committee helped out by painting rooms, doing gardening and routine maintenance work.
The first Abbeyfield Perth house
Inclusion of care home
In 1984, it was decided to expand the provision of accommodation in Perth to include a care home. The old General Accident Training College property at Viewlands House was purchased, with the majority of the funding being provided by grants from The Scottish Development Department and a donation from the Gannochy Trust. The next 2 years were spent renovating and restructuring the building to accommodate 21 residents and then recruiting a Matron, deputy, care and domestic staff and chef/cooks.
The first resident moved in during October 1986 and within a month, the house was fully occupied. At this point, the room which is now the main resident lounge was occupied by 3 people, with a curtain around their bed and chair. (similar to in a hospital). There were communal bathrooms on each floor. The matron lived in the bungalow at 23 Viewlands Road, the deputy lived in the accommodation up at the top floor of the main building which is why there is still a kitchenette, bathroom and what would have been a sitting room and bedroom, now all used as staff changing rooms and storage.
In the grounds at that time there was one bungalow, roughly on the site where the row of Viewlands Court cottages are now. This was occupied by the gardener and his wife, who worked as a carer on night duty. In due course, the first matron moved on to another job and the gardener and his wife moved away and so the two houses were let out using a letting agent for a number of years.
Rio and Viewlands House ran very well in the eighties and nineties, and by 1995 it was agreed that more residential care rooms were required. By this time people’s standards had increased and residents were no longer willing to share the large ground floor room and they expected their own bathrooms. Planning permission was obtained to add a 12 roomed extension to the north side of Viewlands House.
Once the 12 en-suite rooms were ready for occupation, the existing Viewlands House residents were decanted to the new building while the old part of the house was reconfigured to give each room its own shower room. Once the alterations were complete, residents were given the choice of staying in the new wing or returning to their original rooms.
A conservatory, a small sitting room and a designated hair salon were also added at this time and by 1997, just as the new wing and renovations were completed, legislation allowed that Abbeyfield Perth could be registered as a care home for residential and nursing care, since nurses were already employed 24 hours per day. This brought the total of rooms available to 32.​
Expansion
Having the facility to offer nursing care was a huge bonus as residents were able to stay at Viewlands House rather than moving to a nursing home if their needs became too great.
Up until 2001, both homes were registered and regulated by Perth & Kinross Council. In 2001, the Care Inspectorate was set up as the regulator and a whole new set of standards were introduced.
The tenant at No. 23 was John Pearson, architect and he drew up plans to knock down the old bungalow in the lower grounds and build the 5 cottages. These plans were approved and the houses were ready for occupation from 2003. The project cost in the region of £300,000 and has proved to be an excellent use of the Society’s funds. When John’s house became vacant some years later, it was converted into a disabled-friendly 2 bedroom bungalow for renting out to elderly tenants under the same terms as Viewlands Court.
Around this time, minimum wage legislation was also being mooted and this proved to be a huge concern for the very sheltered house, Rio and all other Abbeyfield houses of a similar size.
The pay structure for the housekeeper and her assistant was that they had a salary, and live-in accommodation, and on the very rare occurrence that they were called on overnight, they would be paid a £10 disturbance fee.
Although it took many years for minimum wage legislation to be finally settled, if the housekeeper were to be paid minimum wage for the hours spent sleeping in her apartment, the costs which would need to be passed on to the resident would be too high to make living there still attractive to people.
Plans coming to fruition
End of the road for Rio and Comrie
By early 2006, there were only 7 residents in Rio with no waiting list and so the decision was made to close it down. This sort of accommodation didn’t look to be viable in the long term and since it was now registered as a House in Multiple Occupation, it had to be offered to other social landlords before it could go on the open market. Perth & Kinross Council bought the property for the sum of £450,000 which was deemed to be the market value of the vacant building and they turned it into a refuge for women and children. Three of the residents moved into Viewlands House, two went to another local care home and two went to live with their families.
Although small residential care homes in large family houses thrived in the eighties and nineties, all the legislation being introduced to improve standards meant that many closed down and so it was always hoped that Abbeyfield Perth could build another large extension which would use the funds raised from the sale of Rio.
Sadly the Abbeyfield Comrie home was also uneconomical to keep open and so it’s property was sold in the early 2000’s.
The next expansion plan was for an extension where the old garage outbuilding could be knocked down and a purpose built 8-10 room extension with link corridor would be built and so the Comrie Society gifted their sale proceeds to Abbeyfield Perth. Despite submitting several sets of plans between 2010 and 2012, planning permission was never approved. £30,000 had been spent on having the architects’ plans drawn up so it was quite a blow for it to come to nothing. Abbeyfield Perth were also enquiring about buying some of the land from the neighbouring Water Board but that never came to fruition either.
Abbeyfield Perth continued to approach Scottish Water, either for buying land to build a purpose built dementia unit, or perhaps due to difficulties in staffing, building more cottages similar to Viewlands Court, but to date, have not been successful in this approach.​​
Since Abbeyfield Perth therefore had a surplus of funds, and the Viewlands House property and furnishings were mismatched and looking “tired”, in 2013 it was decided to spend £100,000 on upgrading the furniture, carpets, lighting and redecorating all the public areas of the house. The 5 larger rooms at the front of the original Victorian villa were also upgraded to a very high standard to become “Premium Rooms” attracting a higher weekly charge. There was a fair bit of upheaval while the painting and wallpapering etc. were done, but the house looked fantastic once all the work was completed.
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In 2016, the roof of the old garage outbuilding started to leak. This was the main storage area at that time and the roof had some asbestos in it, so it would have needed replaced at a large cost. Around the same time we received a donation of £25,000 from the family of a resident with the condition that it be used to benefit the residents. It was decided that since we couldn’t get permission to convert the old garage into resident accommodation, then we could convert it into a facility for the residents to socialise in and also have a meeting and training room. It was 2019 before it was finally ready for use and the Alice Thoms Suite was officially named.
2019 also saw a complete refurb of the kitchen at Viewlands House.
Continual redecorating of the public areas, replacing carpets and upgrading wardrobes before new residents move in, continue to keep Viewlands House looking its best.
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2024 saw the installation of 44 solar panels on both the roof of annexe and main house to reduce the care home's carbon footprint and save on the energy costs.
