Our story · A healing charity since 1951
Seventy-five years of an open door
Fernhallow began with one rule that has never changed: healing is given, not sold.
The house sits at the end of Hollins Lane: a stone house, a small chapel and a walled garden on the edge of the hills. Since 1951 it has been kept open by volunteers, healers and the gifts of friends.
Our healing ministry is simple. A healer sits with you in quiet, with or without a light touch, and asks nothing of you. People come in grief, in illness, in recovery or simply in need of rest. Many come back for years.
Alongside healing we teach. Our evening meditation has met every Tuesday for decades, and the Foundations of Healing course has trained many of the healers who work here today.
II. The years
From a family home to an open house
- 1951
A house opened for healing
Edith Hollins, a nurse who had served through the war, opens the doors of her family home to anyone who asks for healing, without charge.
- 1958
The walled garden
Volunteers clear the old kitchen garden. It still grows the vegetables for every retreat lunch.
- 1972
The chapel
The barn is converted into a small chapel for services of healing, open to people of every faith and none.
- 1994
Teaching healers
The first Foundations of Healing course is taught at the kitchen table to six students.
- Today
Still open, still free
Healers, staff and volunteers welcome visitors five days a week, and answer requests for distant healing by phone.
Come and see
The Winter Open Afternoon
Tea, the garden in its winter bones, and the chapel lit early. Free, but we like to know you are coming.
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