Activities at Leonard Lodge Care Home

Residents were pleased to welcome Geoff Rudd from Brentwood Museum to Leonard Lodge in Hutton. Geoff who is a volunteer at the museum gave a fascinating talk about the history of Brentwood starting with the origins of the name Brentwood which was Burnt Wood at one point and  talked about pilgrims passing through Brentwood on the way to Canterbury. 

Some residents have lived in Brentwood for over 50 years and were very interested to hear  about the building of the railway station and that there was even an airport at one time. General manager Fiona Crickmore said everybody really enjoyed the talk and  this sort of activity is made possible through our close links with the local community. 

We hope to visit the museum next year as part of our regular outings programme.

We invited local schools to take part in a portrait competition the subject of which would be a grandparent. We were overwhelmed by the number of entries we received and the residents spent hours sorting through the entries. We originally had 3 categories with 3 winners in each one, but it was so hard to make decisions, that we ended up with 18 winners! We welcomed children from Woodlands school Hutton Manor and St Joseph the Worker primary school, together with parents and grandparents. Our residents were thrilled to spend time with the children who were excited to chat about their pictures and show their grandparents their winning entries. We love getting involved with our local communities and building strong relationships with our neighbours.

Here at Leonard Lodge, we love having visits from animals, so we're always excited to welcome Bonzo the barn owl back. 

The last time we saw her, she was a white fluffy ball of down and now she is a beautiful fully grown barn owl with lots of beautiful feathers!

Bonzo was very relaxed with the residents and enjoyed being stroked by them. Many of the residents had never seen an owl up so close before, so it was so exciting for all to see.

The residents can't wait for the next visit.

Our residents here at Leonard Lodge love a trip out, so we decided a visit to our local garden centre would be ideal, especially at this time of year.

The garden centre was certainly full of surprises...first we encountered a group of skeletons talking about Halloween, then we saw a Halloween tree which is certainly an interesting alternative to a Christmas tree!

We then found out that the Christmas decorations had already been put up, in October.  

We the retired to the cafe to recover from the sensory overload, enjoying tea, coffee and delicious cake. 

We had a fantastic afternoon and we can't wait for the next trip.

We welcomed Meghan back to Leonard Lodge for one of her amazing interactive sensory afternoons. Residents were able to play a variety of games, some competitive , some more relaxing but all good fun. Our residents got involved both physically and intellectually and they all agreed they had a great afternoon and look forward to Meghan visiting again.

Residents had a fun afternoon with flowers. Residents enjoyed smelling the flowers, feeling the different textures and marvelling at natures array of wonderful colours. We discussed favourite flowers and memories connected to flowers such as wedding days and Valentines days. We reminisced about residents gardens and talked about our beautiful Memory Lane garden which has been a riot of colour this year.