A £500,000 cancer centre extension opened yesterday thanks to a massive fundraising effort by the community in Banbury.

Residents, groups and businesses raised £501,409.47 to double the size of the Brodey Centre at The Horton Hospital.

The extra 60sq m of space has increased the number of beds from four to eight and created a larger waiting area and a new mezzanine level at the Oxford Road hospital. It means fewer patients will now have to make a 50-mile round trip to the Churchill Hospital, in Oxford.

A £300,000 appeal was launched in February 2008 and was smashed 14 months later.

Breast cancer patient Sarah Massey, 39, who was diagnosed in March when son Alexander was just six months old, welcomed the new development.

She said: “It’s wonderful here, I don’t know what I would do without it. The staff are just angels, they are not just nurses, they are so much more than that.”

A benefits adviser from Oxford’s Maggie’s Centre, which supports patients’ families affected by cancer, is now based at the centre.

The centre opened in 1998 in memory of Ian Brodey, 69, from Botley, Oxford, who owned Norbar Torque Tools in the town, and had been treated at the hospital for leukemia.