St Martins began its life in a garage at Norwich Cathedral. The Dean at the time, The Very Rev Alan Webster, made a garage available for people who were sleeping rough. This was the first emergency accommodation supported by St Martins. The first person to use this facility was a gentleman called Eddie.
Over the last 30 years, St Martins has been slowly growing in response to the needs of the local community.
Currently, St Martins provides emergency assessment and hostel facilities, residential care, sheltered housing and community homes for 234 people. Outreach services operate daily on the streets and support is provided to people in their own homes to help them to retain their tenancies.
There is also a learning and development centre providing a wide range of opportunities for the people supported by St Martins.
From humble beginnings St Martins has grown into one of the largest local charities in the area and is the biggest homeless charity in Norfolk.
Our 50th anniversary evokes feelings of both pride and sadness. Pride that the organisation is able to provide such a comprehensive range of specialist services, but sadness that they are needed in 2022.
We’re often asked if it is possible to end rough sleeping. We know from ‘Everyone in’ in March 2020 it is certainly possible to end rough sleeping quickly and short term. However, a more sustainable approach to ending rough sleeping relies upon three key drivers: funding, housing and political will. To end rough sleeping forever there needs to be a sufficiency of these three factors.
In Norwich, our annual street count data shows that we are making slow and steady progress. Later this year we hope to have an additional 24 beds available to accommodate people – this will bring us ever closer to our vision of nobody sleeping rough on the streets of Norwich. It may have taken 50 years of twists, turns and challenges, but we are now closer to ending rough sleeping on the streets of Norwich than ever before.
For more information about St Martins, view the 50th anniversary supplement.

It all began with Eddie

When The Very Rev Alan Webster and his wife Margaret first offered up their garage as a dry place for Eddie to sleep for the night in 1970, little did they know that that act of kindness was the start of a charity that has helped more than 25,000 people over the last 50 years. Here, Margaret tells us about Eddie...
I lived in a clergy house all my life – and there was always a bang on the door and we were asked for a cup of tea. We were constantly handing out mugs. One of the people who came most was a rather shy, poor man called Eddie. And he came round a lot. Sometimes he would come at tea time and he would join myself, Alan and the children in our kitchen.
On a rather gloomy winter night Alan said to him: “Eddie, where are you going to sleep tonight?” And Eddie would say: “I don’t think I’ll get to Yarmouth, but I might get to Acle.”
Alan said: “That won’t do Eddie; you can’t. You can stay in our garage.” One of them was clear of clobber, so Alan opened it up and said: “There you are Eddie. It won’t be very warm, but it will be dry. Just lay your stuff out and you can spend the night there. You can go down the Prince of Wales Road and get fish and chips for your supper.”
So Eddie did that. And so very often Eddie would come. Sometimes he would have a bit of tea with us and he always slept there. I’ve never forgotten him. He was so polite and so nice but just had nowhere to live.