The first to scoop an award was St Teresa’s Hospice in Darlington, heralded charity of the year for nearly forty years of first-class palliative care of terminally ill patients.

In 1985, Yvonne Rowe, a gardener who was caring for her friend, Mary Hester, sent a letter to The Northern Echo asking whether the town could have a hospice of its own.

She soon received dozens of letters of support, and after the Carmelite Convent on Nunnery Lane sold land and donated £80,000 for the cause, Harewood House, in Harewood Hill, was bought and converted into a day centre for the terminally ill.

It gained the attention of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who in 1988 wrote a letter that gave the hospice its namesake and St Teresa’s is now located off Woodland Road.

To celebrate the hospice’s ruby anniversa

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