A VILLAGE social group founded to combat loneliness in the wake of the pandemic has raised £5,000 to support the homeless in Salisbury.

The Chilmark Coffee Kitchen holds regular coffee mornings and lunches in the Reading Room to provide an opportunity for the community to meet up and socialise.

Founded by Lynn Menzies, it helps people connect with others in the village.

The meetings are free to attend but people can contribute financially if they wish.

And the group decided to donate these accumulated funds to homelessness charity, the Salisbury Trust for the Homeless (STFH), realising “the one thing they had in common was a roof over their heads”.

Gordon Pardy, head of Fundraising for STFH, said: “We are incredibly grateful to the people of Chilmark – £5,000 is a huge amount of money for a village such as this which only has a small population.

“STFH gets no funding from either central or local government and so we are very much dependent on the generosity of the people of south Wiltshire. The Chilmark donation is a fantastic example of this.”