Winsley House, a fine stone residence in Bath with impressive views across Limpley Stoke valley, was built to last a family for many generations. In fact, it lasted just one before being sold off to pay the medical bills of its young owner, who was being treated for cancer.

Today the medical, social, spiritual and emotional support needed to cope with a terminal illness is better understood, thanks to the work of the modern hospice movement. In the past 40 years almost 200 non-government hospices have been established by health professionals and volunteers, their services provided free of charge.

Yet the dire need for facilities is growing, as the services offered by hospices improve and demand intensifies. Hospices are no longer just places where the terminally ill can end their days; they have become places of refuge for those facing almost any potentially life-threatening illness, and for their family, friends and carers.

For Muriel Moon, 64, of Timsbury, Somerset, who is in remission from a third bout of cancer – which was diagnosed soon after the death of her husband – Dorothy House, as the former Winsley House is now known, is a place in which she found the support and skills that helped her to go on living. “I did not want to go there because I did not want to die. But I will always be indebted to them,” she says.

Each hospice is tailored, at significant cost, to provide the rich mix of inpatient and outpatient care, family accommodation, alternative therapies, medical services, day care, counselling, respite services and education that uniquely fit the demands of a particular community.

At Dorothy House that means an emphasis on providing out-patient and day-care services to a largely rural community scattered through Wiltshire.

After a £2.4 million extension and upgrade, which included the establishment of therapy suites, children’s suites, a craft room and family accommodation, Dorothy House and its staff are able to help 800 people each day.

Sarah Whitfield, the chief executive, says: “We came late to some of the complementary therapies, because we did not have the facilities. We are now able to see more patients in better surroundings and a more therapeutic environment.”

The redevelopment won a RIBA award this year. Its centrepiece is a light, bright chapel that is equipped for wheelchair access and for those too ill to leave their beds to be brought in. We have had several weddings for the bedridden,” Ms Whitfield says.

Hospices, on average, receive 32 per cent of their funding from the NHS, which leaves them with a heavy burden of fundraising just to meet running costs – a fact that has prompted this newspaper to make Help the Hospices a recipient of The Times Christmas Appeal. Money received will go to St Barnabas House, in Worthing, which has raised £7 million to date towards a new hospice to replace the prefab building that was hastily constructed when a local doctor founded the service in 1973.

The Government will contribute £446,000 but another £3 million is needed for a building that Hugh Lowson, the chief executive, says will “bring a quintessential English cottage garden right into the body of the hospice”.

Planning permission is still being sought but it is hoped the project will be completed by 2010.

That new building – brick and copper clad, with each room having access to the garden, thanks to an innovative, starfish design – will have two single-sex wards. Mr Lowson said: “We have raised water features and flower beds so that those in a wheelchair can enjoy the garden. It is a riot of colour, and surrounded by a hedge to give a sense of intimacy.

“We are building a legacy that will be appreciated for years and years to come. We have a specialist team here and in the future we will have a specialist building to work in harmony with them.”