MORE than 200 years of voluntary work and almost £1m raised for cancer research was celebrated in Ringwood when long service awards were made to staff at a charity shop in the town.
Opened in 1989 under the Imperial Cancer Research Fund banner, the shop in the Market Place has since raised some £920,000 for the charity now known as Cancer Research UK following the merger of the ICRF and the Cancer Research Campaign two years ago.
A dozen of the original volunteers who helped set up the shop are still helping out 15 years later and stalwarts John and Rosemary Edwards, who moved to the Ringwood shop from the charity's Salisbury branch, have each clocked up a total of 16 years' service.
Along with Barry Moffat, Inez Philip, Joan Cutler, Elsie Perrin, May Sage, Freda Gibson, Jan Hamilton, Wyn Stubbings, Joan Spreadbury, Edna Nelson and Evelyn Waterman, they were presented with 15-year service badges by Ringwood town councillor Neville Chard and six more volunteers received five-year badges.
The shop is open six days a week with a rota of 30 volunteers and manager Lorraine Cracknell said: "I couldn't run the shop without them."
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