Racehorse Sanctuary News

30th December 2011

Bridge Hill Farm

If I’m honest, when we first viewed Bridge Hill Farm both Sue and I looked at each other and simply said “Oh dear”. We then walked around looking in all the nooks, crannies and falling down buildings and thought we couldn’t cope with the sheer workload that would go with taking on this huge project. We then left, but just a week later, having looked at several other properties, we thought that there was something about this property that was a touch intriguing and we simply had to return for another visit. On this occasion we both felt that although it hadn’t changed on the surface it did feel extremely welcoming and almost as though we had come home. Suddenly our mood changed and we were both full of ideas about how we could organise everything within the limited time we had. As it was a sealed bid sale all sorts of consultations over the telephone took place, trustees were frantically driving from their homes to view and within a couple of days our bid had been lodged. We then had what seemed like the longest week ever waiting to find out if we had pitched our bid correctly and been successful. I’m sure you can imagine the relief and elation when our agent called us and told us we had purchased Bridge Hill Farm by just a whisker over the under bidder.

Although completion on the property wasn’t due until 21st October we had to throw caution to the wind and commence work at the farm two weeks prior to this in order to move the majority of the horses over by 4th November, luckily Louise was very helpful here in that she has allowed us to keep a number of stables at Belmoredean until Christmas which has made our lives a great deal easier.

With forty acres of pasture, four derelict barns, a farmhouse and some falling down buildings absolutely everyone chipped in and within our timescale fifteen stables were erected and around two thirds of the land was fenced and made ready for equines.

Of course there are still huge amounts of work to be done but, with the charity now being secure in its own property, each year we can take on a project to add and improve the centre. Already we have received a grant from Retraining of Racehorses (RoR) which will pay for a five-horse walker and thanks to the generosity of one of our Trustees, Edmund O’Reilly-Hyland, a 20 x 60 metre ménage will be built in the spring of next year.

These are very exciting times for this charity and we owe so much to so many people the only way we can really be sure of repaying them for their generosity is by making sure that this huge step is a successful one and secures the homes of many ex-racehorses who pass through our system.

Hard work by all of the team helping at Bridge Hill Farm has enabled us to transform inside a barn from this.........to this.

And an outside yard from this.......to this!