Launching your business in the middle of a global pandemic is hardly the smooth start most organisations can hope for! But for us, it felt like a much-needed addition to support people in the local community with easy access to restorative care and wellbeing services.
In 2021, we set about restoring the Grade II listed building and soon opened The Mill Birth and Wellbeing Centre - meaning that we’ve recently celebrated our one-year anniversary. We’re proud of our achievements: we’ve come so far in such a short space of time and learnt a lot.
The Birth and Wellbeing Centre was the idea of Alexandra Constant - who is also a Doula, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Facilitator, Mindfulness Based Childbirth and Parenting Teacher, Facilitator for the Stamford Gingerbread Single Parent Group, and Girls’ Net Mentor. She was keen to create a caring community that connects people together, providing support for anyone who needs it.
Now the Mill is host to a range of activities; including massage, beauty and spa treatments, sport and remedial therapies, counselling, antenatal classes, baby groups, retreat days, menopause workshops and much more. It has also become the latest venue to host Andy’s Man Club. This weekly group is designed to bring men together, to get them talking, and to help attendees weather the storms in life.
Our aim is for the Mill to provide a real sense of community. Whether it’s through workshops, groups, drop-in sessions or 1-2-1 consultancy, we want to enable people to easily access support and wellbeing services when they need them. The Mill has also become one of the first sustainable venues of its kind in the UK, with work recently completed to reinstate a working water wheel on-site to generate green energy, after the original water wheel disintegrated through age many years ago. Stretching nearly 4m in diameter, the new water wheel is designed to produce over 30,000 kWh energy per year - enough to power around eight homes. This will enable the entire Wellbeing Centre to be powered by its own green energy - and even create a surplus to go back into the grid. Our aim was always to rescue this unique landmark and save it for future generations. Reinstating a working water wheel was a core ambition of what we wanted to achieve. We were keen to reflect the original purpose of the building and continue to build upon our centre’s environmental credentials. We pride ourselves on being one of the most unique sites in the UK for wellbeing services!
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