Wyrley Rose: a community ethos blooms in Staffordshire

The 90-bedroom Wyrley Rose — Midlands-based Macc Care Group's fifteenth development to date — is also the provider's largest. Having officially opened on 2 June, I visited the home on a hot, sunny day later that same month — with Wyrley Rose already home to an initial intake of five residents — to chat to the Macc Care team, and enjoy a tour of its comprehensive range of facilities.

Offering residential, dementia, respite, and nursing care across its three floors, Wyrley Rose can be found on Walsall Road in Great Wyrley, a small village located a few miles north of both Wolverhampton and Walsall, and some twenty miles distant of Birmingham city centre. Having been mentioned in the Domesday Book, Great Wyrley (distinguished by its 'Great' prefix from the nearby hamlet of Little Wyrley) was once notable as a successful mining village, making use of the now largely defunct Wyrley and Essington Canal, which, in its prime, linked Wolverhampton and Lichfield.

Prior to the construction of Wyrley Rose, the sizeable plot of land on which it now stands was the location of a Victorian Primary School. Following the closure of the school, the site operated as a Community Support Centre, under the ownership of Staffordshire County Council. According to Macc Care, the build went smoothly: 'The build finished on time and to budget. There were no issues with the build; it was properly pre-planned with contingencies as with all Macc Care builds, given the experience within the business of developing new homes.'