Once it is up and running, the Caledon East Abbeyfield house will be one of 29 houses operating in Canada. There are currently 1,100 houses worldwide serving over 9,000 residents. The Abbeyfield Society has a presence in 17 countries, including Japan and Mexico. The first Canadian house was established in Sidney, B.C., in 1987.

The first Abbeyfield Society was founded in 1956 by Major Richard Carr-Gomm in the London Borough of Bermondsey. Major Carr-Gomm bought the first Abbeyfield House at 50 Eugenia Road, South London to care for the lonely elderly in the East End of London. The only qualification for the first residents was loniliness. Major Carr-Gomm became the first housekeeper and was dubbed "The Scrubbing Major" by the press.

Abbeyfield was the name of the street where the first volunteers met, and the name commemorates a large and charitable medieval abbey which had been dissolved by King Henry VIII some four hundred years earlier.