View from the lounge inside The Ship and Castle Hotel

I spend this brief quiet period between Christmas and New Year reflecting on my first year at “The Ship and Castle Hotel” and attached “The View Café” evaluating the successes and challenges of 2012, one positive thing which really sticks in my mind is the vast change in our standing within the local community.

The once “closed” doors of the hotel are well and truly open now, and many factors have lead to this shift in local attitude.  Primarily our involvement in and contributions to the local community, something which the whole team is immensely proud of.  As ever with times of austerity there has to be caution, however this does not simply mean saying no to helping others in our community, it gave us a chance to be more creative!

We as a team discussed and then selected the “Children’s Hospice South-West” as our charity of choice this year back in January, and set ourselves a conservative target of raising £1000 for the year.  Work then began to identify ways which we could help raise vital funds, we decided on 3 events spread over the 12 months.  Afternoon tea, a coffee morning and then a traders dinner were chosen, each different yet interesting and using all the charm of our wonderful hotel.

Afternoon tea took place on Wednesday 25th April 2012 whereby the team did a fantastic job; we charged £5.00 for homemade scones with “Healey’s Cornish Cyder Farm” strawberry jam, “Rodda’s Cornish clotted cream” with “Tetley’s” Tea or “Douwe Egbert’s” Coffee of which all funds went to the charity.  There were numerous stalls selling local crafts as well as a raffle.  The event attracted over 100 visitors and raised £630.30.

Our Coffee Morning took place on Wednesday 10th October 2012 and this time we operated our normal “The View Café” menu with all takings going to charity up until 12noon, a vast variety of dishes were on offer from “Seabass, Pollock, Ginger and Lime Fishcakes” to slices of our Homemade Victoria Sponge or even just a pot of “Tetley’s” tea.  This was even more popular than our previous event with over 120 guests attending, raising £725.00 for Children’s hospice South-West.

Finally we held a “Traders Dinner” inviting all local traders to the hotel for a Christmas dinner on Friday 14th December 2012.  There was an arrival glass of wine, 3-course dinner, coffee with mince pies and entertainment for £15.00 per person, of which £5.00 went to Children’s Hospice South-West, 84 guests came to the event all thoroughly enjoying their evening, one even taking to Trip Advisor to praise the hotel.  There was also a raffle and with all donations we raised £900.00.

View of St Mawes Castle and River Fal

In summary we raised £2255.30 this year for Children’s Hospice South-West, a very important charity who “Help build precious memories for families whose children are living with life-limiting or life threatening conditions”  Something which must not be undervalued.

Aside from the above we have also continued to support other local causes and events such as;
-Providing floor space for St Mawes Christmas Markets
-Providing Raffle prizes for St Mawes Church Group, St Mawes Carnival Committee
-Raising £125.00 for the RNLI with our annual Christmas Raffle
-Poppy Appeal collection raising £20.39

Now we are thinking towards 2013 and wondering how we can beat the 2012 total of over £2350.00 for our next community project, any ideas are welcome!

I would also like to thank all of the team here and everyone within the local community for their support, ideas and contributions, we hope to improve further in 2013.

David McDonald
General Manager

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The Lansdown Grove Hotel

Coast and Country Hotels are giving back to the local community by undertaking a variety of different charity events for their local community. Each hotel has chosen a cause worthy of their ongoing support and staff at the Lansdown Grove hotel staff have been working tirelessly to raise over £2000 to go towards a new state of the art Gamma-CT Scanner for the Royal United Hospital Forever Friends Appeal.

Staff at the hotel ran a 10 Kilometre fun run and hold regular quiz nights at the hotel for the residents in aid of the forever friend’s appeal.

The events and community officer, Jo Hones, said on behalf of the appeal “The team at the Lansdown Grove Hotel has such great enthusiasm and passion for raising money for the Cancer Care Campaign.  We couldn’t achieve our fundraising goals, without support like this!  We would like to thank the Lansdown Grove for their wonderful support and look forward to continuing a relationship throughout the rest of 2012.”

Jane Milliken, general manager at the Lansdown Grove Hotel, said: “I’m really proud of the efforts all my staff have made over the past year that we have been supporting this great appeal. We’re delighted to be able to donate the money raised to such a deserving cause and look forward to continuing our work to support them throughout the year.”

For more information about The Forever Friends Appeal visit www.foreverfriendsappeal.co.uk

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