Peter's House

Named after a former P & O captain who spent all his retirement caring for the homeless by acquiring a shelter in Yeovil, organising volunteers to sleep over and provide a soup kitchen in the carpark in the winter months. He or his wife were always staying in the Shelter filling the gaps where no volunteer was available.

There was a weekly soup kitchen rota. We used to collect the hot soup from the local convent that the nuns had made out of donated tins of food and take it with loaves of sliced bread down to the old station carpark after dark waiting to see who would turn up. There were on average in those days about five or six men aged from about 3o to 60 odd. They seem to have a well travelled annual route across several counties and would always be discussing where one could get the best food or the most comfortable bed or the whereabouts of some lost friend. The Friary near Cerne Abbas was a favourite local stop where the monks would tend to their needs. Numbers now must have exploded for all sorts of different reasons and this is the tip of the iceberg but every little helps.

After Peter died of cancer several years ago the Shelter was moved to this building across the road and a permanent manager put in to ensure the future of this caring charity. What a brilliant legacy.