THE HISTORY OF FARM ANIMAL RESCUE SANCTUARY
1988: The history of FARS kicks off in 1988 when Carole Webb first began looking after rescued animals. She heard of a new-born lamb that was not expected to survive at a local farm in Hertfordshire. Carole, a former veterinary nurse, asked the farmer if she could adopt the tiny lamb, who she called Larry, and took it home to bottle-feed it. Larry was the first of many. Next came premature lamb triplets she named the Didley family, all three having to be syringe fed every few hours. Like Larry, they thrived and the seeds of Farm Animal Rescue Sanctuary were sown.
1992: Gradually Carole’s flock of animals grew and grew and she relocated to Cambridgeshire in the early 1990s, taking on a house with land at Fen Drayton. At one stage she was caring for over 800 rescue animals but finances were always a problem and ultimately she couldn’t afford to keep up the mortgage payments on the house.
1999: In 1999 Carole was forced to move back to Cheshunt where she gave up the comforts of the house in Cambridgeshire to lived in a mobile home on a site with some land for the animals. But it proved a nightmare move, with vandalism causing numerous problems on top of the everyday running of the sanctuary.
2000: Carole decided to rent some land and agreed a long lease on Woolly Park Farm, near Stratford-upon-Avon. Moving all the animals and the mobile home proved a massive project but it enabled Farm Animal Rescue Sanctuary to finally have some stability and long-term future. The 60-acre site at Wolverton is being gradually updated and improved and it is currently home to over 450 rescue animals.
