About Us
At the Edward Hain Centre (EHC) we believe that health care is a necessity for everyone. With a holistic approach, we aim to bring you traditional medical and clinical services as well as a wider choice of preventive care to enhance over-all health and wellbeing.
We are also a community hub, and are the new home of the St. Ives Food Bank. Our rooms are available for the use of various community groups.
For more details, see under the About Us drop-down menu, ‘What We Do.’
We are open from 9-5, Monday through Fridays. We look forward to seeing you at the Centre!
How we are funded
Room rentals from our providers, workshops, community groups; our Friends’ fundraising; generous donors; and grants. For more about our grant funders, scroll down to ‘Our Funding Supporters’ and click on any of their logos.
Room Rentals: UPDATE
From Monday – Thursday (inclusive), rooms are now available to rent up till 7pm. Please note this does not change our normal business hours!
Who we are
The Edward Hain Centre is a registered charity, number 1200936.
Our team consists of a manager, a board of trustees, and many supporters and volunteers.
Sharron Goldingay
Manager
Born in the Midlands, Sharron moved to Penzance in 1997 and has been a ‘local’ ever since. She joins us from Penzance Council, where she worked as their Corporate Service Manager. With her background in management and Procurement, as well as having run a COVID testing centre during the pandemic, her experience brings a fresh, vital approach to our team.
Sharron has two grown sons and a teenage daughter. She is also a keen gardener with an allotment in Gulval, and has a soft spot for donkeys.
Lynne Issacs
Chair
Lynne brings decades of invaluable experience in social work to the centre. Mayoress of St Ives for 2 years when her husband was Mayor, she has been involved in community campaigns for many years, including those to prevent previous attempts to close the Edward Hain Hospital.
As Secretary of the Edward Hain Friends since 2014, Lynne took part in a long series of consultations about the building’s future. She is a major force in steering its transformation into the new Edward Hain Centre for Health and Wellbeing.
Elizabeth Veal
Treasurer
Elizabeth Veal has been a member of the Edward Hain League of Friends for over 40 years. A very active chapel member, with roles including safeguarding, she is also a committee member of the Old Cornwall Society and a volunteer at the British Heart Foundation and the St Ives Museum.
Claire Young
Trustee
As a former District Nurse, and a Registered Nurse at the Edward Hain Community Hospital from 2008 to 2012, Claire’s experience working within the NHS is a great asset to our new centre. She has been involved in the former hospital’s Friends group since 2017, and an active fundraiser and campaigner for the project. She is excited about the benefits that the new centre will bring to the community.
With three grown children, Claire also sings regularly with folk and shanty groups around town.
Kit Grindstaff
Trustee/social media
A former singer and songwriter, now children’s book writer, Kit (née Hain) is our resident wordsmith and social media manager. The youngest great-niece of Capt. Edward Hain, she has been involved since 2016 in efforts to save the memorial to her great-uncle.
Throughout 2022, Kit helped publicise the Friends’ fundraising events that contributed to the building’s purchase. She is proud to follow in the footsteps of her grandmother, who was an original trustee of the former hospital.
Phil Barnett
Trustee
Phil has raised over £3million for charity, and has been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to youth, the Queen’s Award for voluntary service; & the Roy Crossley award.
Involved with amateur theatre for over 50 years, Phil’s proudest achievement has been as founder of his own youth theatre group, Kidz R Us, St Ives . His experience in starting up a new business venture, as well as fundraising, and his commitment to preserving the Edward Hain building for the St. Ives community, add up to being a huge boon to the centre.
Samantha Peters
Trustee
With a Masters in Business Administration from City University and a PhD from the University of Bath, where she studied in the School of Management, Samantha brings to the team her considerable experience of managing public and not-for profit organisations in the health and wellbeing sector.
Having been born and grown up in St Ives, Samantha understands how important the Edward Hain Centre is to the town, and how invaluable it is to the community to have health and wellbeing services provided locally.
Jan Greenfield
Trustee
Jan moved to St Ives in 1993 and opened a nursery. She has been looking after children here ever since. She also runs a nursery in St. Erth, as well as in Birmingham, where she comes from.
She became interested in the Edward Hain after her father attended the day centre there, which he loved, and which enhanced his last years. A recent Secretary of the Friends committee, she is one of the most recent additions to new centre’s Board of Trustees, bringing along her business acumen as well as her extensive experience in child care.
Alan Bennetts
Trustee
Alan was born and grew up in St. Ives, and moved to London in 1977 where he obtained an LLB in law at King’s College University. With 40 years in the profession, he spent the last 25 years at the City of London Corporation, latterly as head of commercial property in the legal department. He brings the team his considerable experience in real estate law.
Recently retired, Alan plans to divide his time between London and St. Ives with his new rescue dog, Arthur, who enjoys walks and is not above being bribed with cheese.
Our Funding Supporters
What we do
In order to provide our community with a wide range of health services, we are working with a number of different providers, groups and organizations.
These will be a mixture of traditional service providers of medical and clinical sessions, and independent providers offering broader-based care and preventive programs known to improve over-all health and wellbeing.
To create community around these broader-based aspects of health, we plan to create a regular schedule of workshops, demonstrations, talks and gatherings. These will be informative, or fun – or both!
We look forward to you and your family members joining us at the Edward Hain Centre.
More specific information coming soon.
In the know
Keep up with what’s new at the centre, and with our Friends’ fundraising events, by signing up to our Newsletter.
We respect your privacy.
The history of the Edward Hain Hospital Building
The Edward Hain Memorial Cottage Hospital in St Ives was founded in 1920, following the purchase of Albany House with funds from the Hain Steamship Company. The intention was to create a lasting memorial to Captain Edward Hain, the only son of Sir Edward and Lady Catherine Hain of St Ives, who was tragically killed at Gallipoli in 1915.
The hospital has always been strongly supported by the local community, both from its inception, as well as after it was taken over by the newly-formed National Health Service in 1948. In the 1960s the hospital’s League of Friends was formed, and have been unfailing fundraisers ever since. Now renamed Friends of the Edward Hain Centre, you can read more about them under the ‘Friends of the EHC’ heading.
Following the closure of the hospital, the Friends faced a decision: either wind the charity up, or continue their long-standing mission of supporting local community healthcare. With the loss of the St Ives Day Centre as well as the hospital, health and social care provision in the town is now considerably worse than it was twenty years ago. So the decision was made: to attempt to purchase the building that has been such a beacon of local care for the past 100 years.
Almost 18 months of talks and negotiations followed, with St. Ives Town Council mediating between the Friends and NHS Property Services. Finally, in late July 2023, the purchase was completed, and the building was returned to community use.
Several members of the extended Hain family have been involved in the proceedings since the wards’ closure in 2016. In a joint statement, they said,
‘This building not only commemorates our great-uncle, Captain Edward ‘Teddy’ Hain, but is also a poignant memorial to all the lost sons of St Ives from the First World War. Our great-grandfather gave so much back to the town he loved, but this particular legacy represents the heart and soul of its people and embodies their unshakable sense of community.’
