Peterborough owner of award-winning tearoom launches year-long  Crohn’s Disease awareness campaign

An award-winning tearoom near Peterborough is the focal point for a year-long charity fund-raising initiative.

The owners of the Victoria House Tearoom, in Wargate Way, Gosberton, near Spalding, have started 12 months of campaigning to raise awareness of Crohn’s Disease.

The action is being taken because a number of staff at the tearoom suffer from the inflammatory bowel disease.

The building is owned by Paul and Sapphira Waterson who converted it into a tearoom three years ago to be run by their daughter Jade, who has Crohn’s disease.

They opened the tearoom to give Jade the flexibility of working whilst dealing with the challenges of Crohn’s Disease, which has hospitalised numerous times and has meant she has been required to take a variety of medications.

Also staff member Georgia Houghton, who joined in 2022, also revealed she too suffered with Crohn’s Disease.

Since then Georgia and Jade have shared many stories about their symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, surgery and the effects on their relationships and family.

It left Sapphira, chief executive of MDS, based in Werrington, Peterborough, a not-for-profit training and development programme for the food, fresh produce and horticulture supply chain, deciding that there needed to be a campaign to raise public awareness of the disorder.

The campaign aims to raise £10,000 for Crohn's and Colitis UK and involves committing to stage an event every month and which could be mirrored by supporters anywhere in the country with those taking part urged to post on the campaign’s social media page.

Jade, Georgia, Sapphira and Aidan (Georgia’s husband) will do blogs, videos, write stories and encourage other people who have Crohn’ s or support someone who has Crohn’ s to do the same.

Fund-raising events will be fun community activities that break isolation and loneliness and encourage talking.

They will include picnic and kite flying festival, golf tournament, ‘bring a pot’ where everyone contributes to a meal, a CV and Interview skills workshop, knit a Christmas jumper with one of the big events involving Aidan walking 100 plus miles in four days with weighted backpack, finishing at Victoria House Tearoom for a celebratory party.

Sapphira said: “We want people to join in nationwide and we want celebrities who are affected by Crohn’s to support our campaign.”