It's part of the £22m development, which provides a range of homes, welfare support and a community for the country's most vulnerable veterans.
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00:00 Well, the weather might have been miserable today, but a joyous occasion here at the Centenary
00:07 Village in Ellesford. Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal was here to visit and open
00:14 a new home for veterans. The site has been here for more than 100 years, opening in 1919
00:22 to provide support for the sick and wounded. Her Royal Highness saw some of the new facilities
00:33 on offer and met the staff and the residents and the fundraisers who made this all possible.
00:40 We've fundraised £22 million since 2016 and it's for veterans, it's to build new facilities
00:47 for veterans, housing, apartments, supported living, but we're building a big community
00:53 centre with teaching rooms and gymnasium. Today the Royal even went into Rod and Veronica's
01:00 home. Rod served in the Royal Engineers for 18 years and Rod and the Royal Highness have
01:07 something in common. She asked me what lot I was with, I said the Engineers, I said with
01:14 the tanks. She looked at me and I was down in Paddedby driving the tank, which I knew
01:21 because I'd seen her down there. She said, who made me driving tanks and I used to drive
01:28 them, which she did once. Just jumped in the one and had a go. But after he left the service
01:36 he suffered 19 months of abuse from his neighbours. He says in that time Veronica lost a lot of
01:42 weight but now they say they've moved here and the life has turned around. There must
01:48 be thousands of people like us that need rescued and it's sad. We were two of the lucky ones.
02:03 We were very lucky. We were. Today you had Her Royal Highness in your front room. How
02:10 did that feel? That was magical. An absolute privilege. But to bear in mind that just over
02:19 a hundred years ago your predecessors came up with a remarkably good model. Quite often
02:26 people reinvent that particular wheel. What you've done is make this model work better
02:32 and better. Arguably it's a little sad that it is as unique as it appears to be and that
02:41 this model doesn't happen elsewhere. Her Royal Highness officially opened 24 new homes today
02:48 at Greenwich House. It's part of 40 new ones here but I'm told by the RBLI that even more
02:53 will be built in the not too distant future. Gabriel Morris for KMTV in Ellsford.