We are at 7 Barn Hill, Stamford PE9 2AE — the stone town house with the bottle-green door and the brass plate, thirty seconds uphill from Red Lion Square and five minutes’ walk from Stamford station. Parking is simplest in the Broad Street or Wharf Road car parks, both a short level walk away; patients who need to park closer can use the practice’s own space in the rear courtyard by arranging it with reception when booking. There is level access from that courtyard, a ground-floor surgery for anyone who prefers not to manage the Georgian staircase, and a hearing loop at the desk. Assistance dogs are welcome and are on friendly terms with the postman.

Bring a list of any medication you take — the boxes themselves are even better — and, if you have them, the name of your previous practice so we can request your records with your permission. Arrive ten minutes early the first time; the forms are short but the staircase deserves an unhurried arrival. If you are nervous, say so when you book: reception will quietly schedule you a longer appointment at a calm time of day, and nothing whatsoever will happen at that first visit without your say-so. Children are welcome at a parent’s appointment, where waiting-room books and the ledger-spotting game keep them occupied.

A practice this age accumulates distant loyalists — patients who moved away and kept their dentist. From Peterborough it is fifteen minutes on the train and a five-minute uphill walk from Stamford station; from the A1 leave at the Stamford junction and the Wharf Road car park is three minutes from the door. Patients travelling any distance can ask Margaret to stack appointments — examination and hygiene in one visit, or a family seen in a single afternoon — so the journey earns its keep. We will even tell you honestly whether the trip is worth it for a check-up, or whether a practice nearer your new home would serve you better; several have heard the second answer and come anyway.

Appointments are confirmed by text or letter — genuinely your choice, and about a third of the practice still chooses letters — with a reminder two days ahead. If you need to move an appointment, more than a day’s notice costs nothing; missed appointments without word are charged at half fee after the first, which the practice regrets but the appointment book demands. The useful secret is the short-notice list: tell Margaret you can come at short notice and you will be rung when a slot opens the same day, which is how the impatient get seen fastest at a practice that refuses to hurry.

Ring at 8:30 on any surgery day and say the word emergency — same-day slots are held every morning for patients in pain, whether or not you have been here before, at the published £95 emergency fee including the X-ray. Outside surgery hours the practice answerphone carries a recorded advice message and the NHS 111 dental route; genuine emergencies — uncontrolled bleeding, facial swelling that is closing an eye or affecting breathing — should go straight to A&E, and the message says so plainly. Registered patients mid-treatment are given Dr Wray’s protocol for weekend problems with their treatment plan, which is a sentence that has ended many a Saturday panic.