HOMELESS people flooded into the warmth today as Christmas shelters flung open their doors to offer a roof, food and friendship for the festive season.
Queues of people formed outside the largest centre in south London before the official opening time as biting winds added urgency to the quest for comfort.
But within minutes, hot tea and reunions with old friends created a party atmosphere in the empty printing works building which has been transformed to accommodate up to 2,000 people.
The London shelter is one of a network of 41 centres co-ordinated by the charity Crisis over the next seven days.
About 4,000 people with nowhere else to go are expected to take up the chance to have three meals a day, a mattress to sleep on and a full Christmas dinner tomorrow.
The shelters also offer fresh clothes, welfare and accommodation advice, doctors, dentists, chiropodists, nurses and hairdressers all services provided on a voluntary basis by professionals.
Mr Taffy Cunningham (32) said his priority was to get his feet sorted out. After two years sleeping rough since his marriage broke up, he said his feet were so painful he could hardly walk.
"It's agony. I have to walk around all day and my feet are in a terrible state, they're covered in blisters and sores."
Ms Emma Supple (29), a chiropodist who has been helping out at the shelter for the past three years, said she expected to see many similar cases and worse.
"It's a combination of walking around so much, having wet feet, wearing ill fitting shoes all problems of living rough. People will be coming here with chilblains, out of control fungal infections, trench foot if we're really unlucky, frost bite and so on."
Although grateful for the shelter and the food on offer, for many of the people streaming into the centre today it was the companionship that was the biggest draw.
Mr Tom Kelly (58) said he had come from Galway specifically to spend Christmas at the shelter as he had done every year for the past decade. "I got a bus over at the end of October and Iam going back on January 2nd," he said. "I've had my feet done already I couldn't get that in Ireland. I lived in London for eight years and I come back to meet my friends."
The south London shelter in Bermondsey, donated by Callington Estates, is the largest of II on offer in the capital, boosted by a 40ft truck providing a mobile lifeline for people still left on the streets. Thirty more shelters have been set up around Britain in partnership with local organisations the biggest network of centres the charity has ever been involved with.