Care home residents were taken back to 1940s Suffolk complete with wartime rations, air raid sirens and dances to Vera Lynn.

Kingsley Healthcare’s Allonsfield House in Campsea Ashe, hosted the event, with crafts and dressing up, to provide nostalgic fun and therapeutic benefits.

The home’s Leanne Carrington-Payne said many residents had dementia and the activities, helped with memory.

“A lot of them grew up in this area and remember playing by the river and then hearing the air raid siren,” she added.

“They can recall rushing home to find their mum waiting to go in the shelter.”

Staff at the Kingsley Healthcare run home were transformed into wartime land girls, corned beef and spam were restored to the tea-time menu, while residents got up and danced to the strains of Vera Lynn and Doris Day.

Entertainment ranged from bingo, using authentic war-time cards, to a concert by vintage singer Annika Rands.

During craft sessions, residents turned their hand to making model Spitfire aircraft out of card and poppies out of felt and buttons.

Ms Carrington-Payne said the home’s special war-time teas with corned beef sandwiches had sparked a lot of memories of what it was like to live on rations.

“In this part of rural Suffolk, a lot of our residents remember their diet being supplemented with pheasant and rabbit. Many of them also remember their family growing vegetables,” she added.

“One of our residents remembers her mum saving their sugar ration to bake her a birthday cake.”

Ms Carrington-Payne said there were also “poignant memories” stirred of loved ones being lost in the war.

She said the event had been such a success, and a fitting tribute to the sacrifices of war in the month of the First World War Armistice, that they were already planning a repeat next year.