IT WAS the moment so many had been waiting for - when patients and staff at St Leonard's Hospice finally moved into their new £2 million extension.

Today's transition followed a weekend of hard work to prepare the new annexe.

The move is the culmination of a six-day programme, which involved installing the administration and medical side before bringing the patients from the old part of the hospice into the new.

St Leonard's £2 million target was finally reached this summer after a two-and-a-half year Millennium fundraising appeal, backed by the Evening Press.

The new extension has two wards of four beds and 12 single rooms, each decorated in soothing greens and blue shades, and all with en suite modern bathrooms with the latest gadgets to make it easy and safe for patients to take baths.

The new nurses' station and modern reception are in the open-plan dome area in the centre of the building, with all the rooms around the edge. This is pinnacled by a vast wooden and copper dome, incorporating huge windows, making the whole extension bright and airy.

It has extensive wooden features, making it look warm and inviting and all around the perimeter is a wooden balcony which patients' beds can be wheeled on to, direct from their bedroom.

Underneath the ground floor level are scores of offices, doctors' offices, meeting rooms and locker rooms.

The old part of the hospice will now undergo a 12-week refurbishment project to transform it into a new day care unit and therapies centre.

Patients and staff joined in a celebratory drink to mark the occasion.

Janet Morley, fundraising manager for the hospice, said: "It's certainly been a hectic day and an extraordinary week - but very exciting and we are so thrilled with the new annexe.

"It is absolutely beautiful and we know it will make such a difference for the patients and their families."

Updated: 11:13 Monday, November 12, 2001