There’s a warmth to Dolly’s Tea Room on Stoke Road that goes beyond the smell of fresh tea and coffee and homemade cakes. It’s in the conversations happening across the mismatched vintage tables. It’s in the hugs exchanged between regulars. It’s in the way the co-owner, Tracy, speaks to people like she’s known them for years, even if they’ve only just walked through the door.

For Tracy, Dolly’s was never just about tea. It was about survival. About rebuilding. About people. And perhaps most importantly, about giving others the kind of hope she once desperately needed herself.

Originally from Victoria Falls in Africa, Tracy’s story is anything but ordinary. Long before Gosport became home, she lived in Victoria Falls and worked in crocodile conservation.

“I used to run a bookshop,” she says, smiling. “Then one day the co-founder of a crocodile sanctuary asked if I’d come and work for them.”

She did, and soon found herself working in the scientific department, hatching crocodile eggs and helping raise the young reptiles before releasing them back into the wild.

“If crocodiles survive hatching in the wild, many get eaten before they even reach two years old,” she explains. “So, we’d hatch them, raise them safely, then release them back to balance the ecosystem.”

It was hands-on, unusual work, and the sort of life experience most people only see on television. But conservation mattered deeply to Tracy and her late husband, Nigel.

“We were conservationists anyway,” she says. “That was our life. I come from a town called Victoria Falls, where you could hear the heartbeat of the falls. That place shaped so much of who I am,” she says, honestly.

After I married Nigel, I moved to be with him to a town called Hwange, a small coal-mining town on the border of Hwange National Park. Life there was full of community, nature, and adventure. Alongside the conservation work, I was hugely involved in amateur dramatics. I played principal girl three times, performed in short plays, and always seemed to be on one committee or another. I loved being part of community life there.”

Then, in 2000, everything changed.

Nigel became ill, and the family moved to England with their young daughter in search of treatment and stability. Starting again wasn’t easy.

“I had three jobs at one point,” Tracy says. “You do what you have to do to survive,” she says.

“When I arrived in this country in 2000. I literally arrived with two suitcases, £75, and an 8 year old, with no access to public funds. I used to do talks at small community gatherings, sharing about life in Zimbabwe, the heartbreak of leaving your country as an immigrant, and the realities of what had been left behind, with war, child war camps, poverty, and a country I still carried deeply in my heart. That shaped me deeply too.”

Over the years, she built a life in Gosport, eventually spending two decades working for Wightlink in HR and staff engagement, organising events and supporting teams across the business.

But heartbreak struck again when Nigel died from skin cancer in 2010.

“He was an incredible man,” she says quietly. “When he died, I went on a whole journey after that.”

Years later, she met her now-husband, Alasdair, a professional chef and her biggest cheerleader.

But life had one more major turning point waiting for her, one that would ultimately change the direction of everything.

Before Dolly’s opened its doors, Tracy found herself facing one of the most traumatic experiences of her life, surviving a devastating house fire that would leave both her home and her sense of self shaken.

In 2023, she was caught in a house fire at her home near Priddy’s Hard.

“It was just a normal day,” she recalls. “I’d done the washing, tidied the house, sat down on the sofa and fell asleep.”

She woke to smoke filling the room.

“I inhaled smoke as I was trying to work out what was happening,” Tracy recalls. “I was disoriented. I couldn’t understand where the smoke was coming from or how bad it was. Then I realised it was the tumble dryer, and I burned my hand trying to tackle it.”

As panic set in, Tracy became trapped in the narrow gap between the tumble dryer and the sink.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is it. I’m not getting out.’ Everything happened so quickly.”

It was her neighbour Gerry who heard the commotion and saw the smoke so rushed in to help.

“Gerry came into the house and got me out,” she says, her voice softening. “If he hadn’t come in when he did… I genuinely wouldn’t be here today.”

The fire caused devastating damage to the property, leaving the house unliveable for seven months while it was rebuilt. During that time, Tracy and her husband were forced to live out of a nearby hotel room, putting their lives and plans for the future completely on hold.

“We were in the middle of buying a house on the Isle of Wight when the fire happened,” she explains. “It was going to be a new chapter on a new island, but after the fire, everything changed. We dropped out of the move and decided to stay in Gosport and rebuild what we already had.”

Tracy said what followed was one of the darkest periods of her life.

“When you survive something like that, people assume you should just feel grateful to be alive,” she says truthfully. “But mentally, I was struggling massively. I’d lost my sense of safety.”

Already carrying years of grief and trauma, the emotional toll became overwhelming.

“As well as the fire, my daughter Danielle and five beautiful grandchildren had also just moved to Peru. I am very close to them so that was a very painful for me, as they suddenly felt so far away. Combine that with being displaced for months, I just felt completely untethered,” she says. “The fire stripped everything back. It forced me to look at my life properly.”

During that period, Tracy says she became alcohol dependent as she tried to cope with the emotional fallout.

“That’s why I understand addiction in the way I do now,” she says honestly. “Sometimes people aren’t drinking or reaching for something because they’re weak, they’re trying to numb pain they don’t know how to carry.”

“I struggled,” she says honestly.

Yet Tracy speaks of the fire not only as a tragedy but also as a transformation.

“It was beauty from ashes,” she says. “That fire changed my life. It made me realise I wanted to start living properly.”

After returning home, she took redundancy from Wightlink at the age of 58 and spent six months simply rediscovering herself.

“It was a scary move to take redundancy, because after so many years it felt like stepping out into the unknown, but I also knew there was more for me out there in the big wide world.” Tracy says that decision became part of the turning point that helped her step into a new chapter.

“To mark a year since the fire, I walked on hot coals in Salisbury. I didn’t tell anyone beforehand. Alasdair was away at a golfing meeting, and I went and did it on my own because I needed to face my fears. It was a very personal moment for me, almost like saying to myself, the fire didn’t finish me,” she says.

“I started writing, sitting in cafés, studying people, talking to strangers, and spending time with friends. It was the first time in years I’d just stopped and started living the life I wanted, just for me.”

At first Tracy considered opening a cat café in Gosport, and then out of the blue, Dolly’s Café became available.

The historic tearoom already had deep roots in the Gosport community. Inspired by vintage wartime tea rooms that once served soldiers through serving windows, Dolly’s has become a beloved local institution over the years.

“When I found out the history, I just loved it,” Tracy says. “So we wanted to keep Dolly’s alive.”

Since taking over the tearoom in November 2025, Tracy and Alasdair have created far more than a café.

“From the very moment the mayor officially announced Dolly’s as open to the public again, It has been about connection,” she says. “That’s what Dolly’s is. People need somewhere to belong.”

And people clearly do belong there.

Tracy lights up when she talks about her team, affectionately nicknamed “The Dollyettes” including Ashdon, a young neurodiverse man from St Vincent College who joined them through a Supported Internship Programme.

“When Ashdon first came in, his head was down,” she says. “Now he walks in, high-fiving everyone. Watching his confidence grow has been incredible.”

That transformation, helping people rediscover themselves, has quietly become Tracy’s life mission and skillset.

Alongside running Dolly’s, she delivers free 15-week recovery courses for people struggling with addiction and trauma.

“The first course I hosted we had 22 people registered,” she says. “The current one has around 18 to 25.”

Tracy says that participants don’t just talk about addiction. They talk about life.

“Everyone has a story,” Tracy says. “We carry pain, grief and trauma, and often addiction becomes the thing we reach for to soften that pain.”

Watching people change through the course is what keeps her going.

“Week one, they walk in with the weight of the world on their shoulders and their head down. By week 16, their heads are high as they walk in and they’re smiling again, getting jobs back, reconnecting with friends and family and their life.”

Tracy hopes to soon introduce bereavement afternoons at Dolly’s too, another space for people to gather, talk and support one another.

Because for Tracy, community matters deeply.

“We love Dolly’s home on Stoke Road,” she says. “The businesses, the locals, the friendships. It reminds me of an old Italian restaurant where everybody congregates and knows each other.”

That sense of belonging is exactly what she and Alasdair want Dolly’s to become.

“A community hub,” she says firmly. “Dolly’s is everyone’s home as much as it is ours,” she says, before explaining her Cup of Kindness programme. “It is something we have introduced so that people can quietly donate towards blessing someone else with a cuppa, a meal, or a moment of comfort when they need it. It really reflects the heart of Dolly’s, with small acts of kindness, dignity, and community.”

As well as Dolly’s and the recovery courses she runs, Tracy also campaigns on raising awareness of the dangers of skin cancer following Nigel’s death, encouraging people to check for changes in their skin and to take sun protection seriously. “I do also have plans to support Gosport Harbour Cancer Support through a fundraiser, which is very close to my heart because of losing Nigel to cancer,” she says.

And then there’s the book.

Still being written in the early mornings before Dolly’s opens and in the quiet moments between busy shifts, Tracy’s upcoming memoir, ‘I Survived a Fire’, will chronicle an extraordinary life shaped by survival, loss and resilience.

From witnessing war and violent deaths as a child in Africa, to working on crocodile conservation projects in Victoria Falls, moving across the world to England and juggling three jobs to support her family, the book follows Tracy through decades of grief, addiction, heartbreak and ultimately recovery.

But at its core, she says, the book is not about tragedy, it’s about hope.

“I want people to read it and realise they can survive difficult things,” she says. “We’re all survivors in one way or another.”

Because if there’s one thing Tracy believes wholeheartedly, it’s that “your story can help somebody else”, she explains.

In many ways, that sentence feels like the true heart of Dolly’s Tea Room.

Not just tea and cake. But stories. Survival. Second chances.

And in the middle of Stoke Road, one woman quietly reminds Gosport that even after the darkest moments, people can still rebuild something beautiful.

For more information on Dolly’s Tea Room, visit: https://www.dollysvintagetearooms.co.uk/ or you can follow Dolly’s on Facebook.

Bereavement afternoons will run at Dolly’s on Mondays from 1st June, 3pm to 5pm.

The next Recovery Course will run from Tuesday 18th August through to 24th November.  Details to follow on: https://family.church/location/gosport/ plus Dolly’s Facebook page.