The Physical Abuse Centre said a big thank you Fairmont Hamilton Princess staff yesterday after being nominated as the hotel's adopted shelter for the next three years.

The centre, which assists men and women who leave their abusive homes to start afresh, will now receive furniture, linen, toiletries and household goods from the hotel which need replacing.

The hotel's head houseman/supervisor Reid R.C. Furbert said things such as pillows, mattresses and other furnishings needed replacing because they no longer met hotel standards, but they were still in very good condition.

So it made sense, he said, for them to be passed on to a good cause that needed them, rather than being put out as garbage.

And since the centre was nominated as the hotel's adopted shelter in May of this year, it has already received numerous items, including toiletries that bared the markings of the hotel's previous owner Canadian Pacific, which could no longer be used.

Mr. Furbert said: "We have a recycling programme at the hotel called The Green Team and this project falls in very well with that.

"The hotel is constantly recycling things like pillows, bed linens, towels, dressing gowns and so on, so it makes perfect sense for us to pass them on to people who really need them and have very little.

"A lot of the furnishings may have very little wrong with them, but after a while they have to be replaced to meet the standards of the hotel.

"Mattresses, for example, are replaced a lot more often than people would replace them at home.

"We know that by giving them to the Physical Abuse Centre, they are going to a good cause.

"I think it's going to be a very cold winter this year, so they will come in very handy, I am sure."

He urged other residents to get on board to help out the shelter by offering similar items when they replace them with new.

Rosana Vickers, from the abuse centre, said many people arrived at the shelter with only the clothes they were dressed in because they had literally fled an abusive home.

She said: "These are exactly the kinds of things some people need when they leave abusive relationships.

"Often, they have absolutely nothing. Sometimes they don't even have a toothbrush, and we try to provide them with what they need and help them to get them started.

"This is the very sort of `in kind' service that is important to the centre.

Before, we would have had to have waited for things to be donated, but now we get things regularly.

"We are just so grateful to the hotel for adopting us as their shelter.

"It has come at a wonderful time.

"Hopefully, at the end of the three years, we will be nominated again."

Co-ordinator of the charity appeal at the hotel Lauren Perinchief said it was the first time the Hamilton Princess had nominated a shelter to adopt.

She added: "It's a very good cause and we wanted to help in anyway we could.

"This is a great way for us to recycle and we know that they are much appreciated."