“In the 1980s, Anthea Hare, the founder of Richard House was researching the need for a children’s hospice in East London. Towards the mid-1980s Anthea approached local community groups to discuss with them an ‘exciting  project’, and one of these groups was the East Ham Round Table.  

The Round Table club raised funds for local charities by running the annual Firework event in Central Park, the annual “donkey derby”, Christmas Carol collection in Wakefield Street, Christmas Float around the street of East Ham, and taking our burger stall to various fetes. Alan, one of the group’s members had only recently been chairman of the Round Table and became an ardent supporter of Richard House and Anthea’s project would indeed be local and we were keen to support her. 

To keep Round Table young and enthusiastic, the club had an age limit of 40, with many members, including Alan going on to join Newham & District 41 Club and the West Essex Round Table Lodge where Alan was keen to remind us about the now well-established Richard House which we continued to support. 

Lifelites, the Masonic charity set up in 2000 to donate technology specifically to Children’s Hospices, installed broadband, Sky TV package, computers and digital cameras etc at Richard House in 2002 and assigned an IT consultant as first point of call, who also happened to be a member of Alan’s 41 Club and Lodge. Thus the link continues to this day. 

Alan sadly passed away in 2015. Alan chose to leave a Legacy to Richard House in his Will well knowing it would go to a cause he fondly remembers from before the project even got off the ground.

Lifelites continues to donate assistive technology to Richard House every 4 years.”

Thank you to Bob Osborn for sharing this story with us.