Bluebell View: high quality care in historic Oswestry

Located five miles from the Welsh border, the Shropshire town of Oswestry has been the site of human settlement since the Iron Age. Border tussles during the Middle Ages saw the town being claimed by both the English and the Welsh, and today Oswestry still has a number of Welsh-language road names to show for these historic disputes. Today a bustling market town, Oswestry is the location of HC-One's Bluebell View, an 80-bed, state-of-the-art £12.6m home that opened in April of this year after a two-year build. I visited Bluebell View on a sunny day in early August to chat with home manager Michelle Middleton Price about her vision for the home. I also met HC-One's area director for Bluebell View, Jodie Evans, and Sheilagh Lewis — Bluebell View's resident liaison manager — who kindly filled me in on the history of the site where Bluebell View now stands.

Bluebell View is located a few minutes' walk from Oswestry town centre on a large site that — at various times — has been a local football ground (for the now sadly-defunct Oswestry Town F.C.), a social club, a gasworks (hence a bridge nearby still being referred to as the 'gasworks bridge' by locals), an aluminium factory, and a gutter and downpipe manufacturer. In fact, Sheilagh tells me that, back in the day, local schoolchildren were threatened by their parents and teachers alike that, if they did not do well enough at school, they could expect to find themselves working on the production line at the aluminium factory attaching handles to saucepans.

The history of the site has been a definite plus for Michelle and her team, who have found that the location — particularly its sporting heritage — sparks fond memories in residents' minds.