Community at the Corner House
We are proud to host a range of community based projects at the Corner House and War Memorial Hall. These projects include the Corner Stone Project, Meals on Meals, The Day Centre and a Community Book Shop.
The Cornerstone Project
We are open Monday to Saturday 10am to 1pm, with a great team of volunteers.
St Marys Church working in the community. We believe the Cornerstone can provide a base for all of Charlbury which would enable us to build a stronger community, both for those who give and those who receive.
The Cornerstone project started at the Corner House on August 10th 2020, when the doors opened to the new home for the expanded Give & Take, the Learning Café and the Place to Talk. Expanding the Give & Take with the help of Christine Elliott is now allowing Charlbury residents to have a year round place to share excess local produce (look out for daily availability) and continue to support our community larder. The Cornerstone continues to support a number of local vulnerable families with food boxes each week, supported by donations of food and money.
If you would like more information on the Cornerstone, please email or call us on 075107 72764 during opening hours.
– Jo Paton, Cornerstone Manager
The Cornerstone
We are grateful to the Corner House for making space for the Cornerstone. In the front room we have fresh local and surplus produce for all to help themselves to. We have community fridges and freezers and are able to provide food bags to households in need on a weekly basis. In our back room we have children’s books and games, and grown up fiction. We have spare Charlbury school uniform which is available on request and brought out each term for all to take, to help those who need it and to encourage recycling of good quality clothes.
The Learning Cafe
The Learning Café runs twice a week, supporting pupils from the Primary school in topic areas where they could benefit from one to one or one to two support. Most volunteers are retired teachers or come with expertise in a topic area that they can support the young people with.
A Place to Talk
Through A Place to Talk we support individuals and households in Charlbury to access support and advisory services. The Cornerstone is working with Citizens Advice and other service groups to give them a place to connect with Charlbury residents. We are able to refer families on to a number of support services.
If you would like to donate to the Cornerstone Project, you can do so by popping into the Cornerstone to donate in the donation box. You can also send a cheque (made out to Charlbury PCC with a note attached saying for the Cornerstone). If you would like to gift aid – please email for the gift aid form. You can also send a one off payment or set up a regular payment using the bank details below.
Online details are: Charlbury PCC, Sort Code: 40-52-40, Account No: 0003237 (Please reference: Cornerstone)
Charlbury Community Bookshop
Open 10am -1pm Monday – Saturday
A great selection of second hand books are available for sale at the Corner House. The Bookshop is run by John Partington and Neil Pakenham-Walsh to raise money for the Corner House and Memorial Hall while providing the Charlbury community and beyond with good quality books. They have raised in total well over £23,000, and the books keep coming!
Anne Downer Room (downstairs) you will find good quality non fiction books for £1 each (or 3 for £2).
Charlbury Cornerstone you will find adult contemporary fiction and children’s books and games. Adult non fiction books are £1 each (or 3 for £2). While the children’s books are all 50p each.
Oliver Watney Room (upstairs) you will find fiction and non-fiction books, DVD’s and CD’s.
Meals on Wheels
Tuesdays
Charlbury Meals on Wheels serves a freshly cooked meal (main course, vegetable and other side dish, plus dessert) each Tuesday. The meal is prepared by our volunteer cooks and delivered by our volunteer drivers at midday. Deliveries are made to residents of Charlbury, Spelsbury, Chadlington, and Stonesfield.
Cost per meal is £3.00 and the money is collected every 10 weeks.
If you know of someone who would enjoy a meal and a brief visit or would like to volunteer to help, please contact Margie as well, please contact Margie Glasgow.
Charlbury Day Centre
Wednesdays, 10am-3pm, Memorial Hall
The Day Centre is a weekly facility to enable home-bound elderly folk to gather in a sociable setting. However since the pandemic started it has become more of a lunch club – at first delivering meals to our members and more recently serving them lunch in the garden room. It may be that we contunue to operate as a lunch club, where people can meet and socialise.
If you know of anyone, who may be interested, please be in touch. And if anyone thinks that they might like to join us, they would be very welcome to come and meet us all over coffee or tea. Our service is dependent on the commitment of our excellent team of volunteer drivers, cooks and helpers. We always need more drivers to transport members to and from the Day Centre (in your own car), people to cook a simple midday meal for up to 14 people, and helpers to support the manager with serving drinks and lunch, activities and entertainment and providing a friendly, sociable atmosphere with time to listen and chat! This is usually just a half day commitment once or twice a month, so if you have a few hours to spare please consider helping out.
For more information contact Bob Tait (Chairman of the Trustees) by email or call 01608 810150
Healthcare Information For All
Hello, I’m Neil Pakenham-Walsh and I have been working the past 7 years with Clare Watts in the John Kibble room at the top of the stairs in the Corner House. I work as the founder and coordinator (and Clare as office manager) of the non-profit Healthcare Information For All (HIFA), which collaborates with the World Health Organization to help ensure that people in low-and middle-income countries have access to reliable healthcare information, in a language they can understand. Failure to access and apply reliable healthcare information is a leading cause of preventable death and suffering worldwide. HIFA is a global social movement to improve the availability and use of reliable healthcare information and reduce the harms of misinformation.
We are grateful for financial support from organisations and individuals, including many from Charlbury. If you would like o donate or support us please contact me at neil@hifa.org