Our Services
Our Services
The Trenches, Drop-in Café
The Veterans Café, known as The Trenches, provides a welcoming place where veterans, their families, and the wider community can come and enjoy breakfast, lunch, and tea/coffee with cake. It’s more than just a café – it’s a space within our Veterans Community Hub in Newton Aycliffe where like-minded people can meet and share experiences, offering informal yet meaningful veterans support.
Wood Skills Workshop
There will be a veterans woodcraft skills workshop offering courses and sessions in hand carving and scroll saw work to begin with. In time, the programme will expand to include basic woodworking skills, supporting veterans mental health support through purposeful, hands-on activity. These workshops are key components of our veterans community hub, encouraging recovery, learning, and confidence building.
We are also developing a project whereby individuals can hire a workbench, including access to tools and equipment (after a mandatory induction), to complete their own projects. This initiative adds a personal development pathway to our wider veterans support services.
Main Workshop
In our main workshop, furniture is being built and a more intensive training course—similar to a Bench Joinery Course—is available. This area supports those interested in advanced veterans woodcraft, helping veterans in Newton Aycliffe and surrounding areas develop new skills, career aspirations, and therapeutic routines as part of their journey through veterans mental health support.
Virtual Reality Suite
The Centre also includes a VR suite with powerful PC-based VR equipment, alongside mobile VR headsets that can be taken out to organisations. These applications support health improvement, travel experiences, and communication skills. As part of our broader veterans support offer, VR helps enhance accessibility and is a unique feature of our veterans community hub.
The Vintage Veterans Project
The Vintage Veterans Project includes the restoration of a Massey Ferguson tractor and a full rebuild of a 1932 Albion Lorry, with support from Paul at Rusty Trucks. Volunteers are essential to this work, and it offers another engaging pathway within veterans woodcraft and technical skills. Once the Albion is complete, a Vintage Denis Fire Engine is also on offer! This hands-on activity is highly beneficial as an informal form of veterans mental health support, combining purpose, teamwork, and craftsmanship.
What We Have To Offer.
Foremost in what we offer is a friendly, supportive environment where veterans and their families feel safe – a key objective of our Veterans Community Hub in Newton Aycliffe.
A Veterans Café: Breakfast, lunchtime meals, afternoon tea, and cake in a sociable setting.
Two veterans woodcraft workshops:
A more advanced wood workshop with machinery that can tackle most woodworking jobs. In this workshop, we plan to deliver more courses based on the C & G bench Joinery Programme. Eventually, these courses offer qualifications, and this workshop will also deliver a higher level of woodworking skills for the individual.
The Second Workshop will offer a General interest woodworking skills training course, such as Hand Carving, Scroll saw projects and, initially, limited woodturning skills. These workshops promote wellbeing and resilience as part of our broader veterans mental health support services. Due to the very limited space we have on the ground floor, only woodworking skills will be taught until we are able to gain access to more space.
A Virtual Reality Suite: Supporting those with mobility issues, Parkinson’s, or dementia, extending our inclusive reach within the veterans community hub.
The Vintage Veterans Project
- The restoration of Vintage Vehicles (supported by Rusty Trucks)
- A Ferguson Tractor to be stripped down and the engine rebuilt
- 1932 Albion Lorry to be completely restored, using as much of the original vehicle as we can.
- Possible future projects include a Saracen APC, and a Denis Fire Engine
Volunteers are needed to lead and support these exciting initiatives.
We Work Closely With
