Our History

The Centre began in 1984 in a Letchworth dining room – providing low cost homeopathic treatment by a qualified medical doctor.  Clearly meeting a deep public need, we flourished and in a very short time our offerings broadened to include other holistic treatments:  massage, osteopathy, the Alexander Technique and, importantly, innovative classes which taught people about how to take care of their own health. Over time, these became the backbone of our work.  

To accommodate our growing practice, we moved to the Letchworth Settlement, followed by the former Water Board house, and finally to our current home, the former Rosehill cottage hospital. Rosehill had been an infectious disease facility during the first World War, a maternity hospital between the wars, finally ending its NHS connection in 1986 as a geriatric unit.

The Centre now occupies this site which has been used to support health for over 100 years.

In the 1990s, the external context was changing and what had been considered ‘fringe’ or ‘quackery’ was beginning to acquire the almost mainstream respectability of ‘complementary’ and ‘holistic’.

The Centre was in the vanguard of this interest and developed pioneering programmes and important partnerships with the NHS, with local schools and community organisations – delivering dozens of unique wellbeing programmes for children, single parents and older people.