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Pauline Grant - Sussex Horse Rescue Trust

Hempstead Farm
Hempstead Lane
Uckfield
East Sussex
TN22 3DL
Tel: 01825 762010

sussexhorsetrust@yahoo.com

“Come quickly,” screamed the girl down the phone. “I’ve got my thong around the horse’s head. I don’t think I can hold him much longer. Hurry. Hurry.”

Perhaps not the most typical call taken by Pauline Grant, who founded and runs the Sussex Horse Rescue Trust. “It was late on a Saturday night. A group of horses had escaped from a field on to the road on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. A whole load of revellers from a nearby pub had rounded them up – I could hear them in the background – and were trying to keep them for us until we arrived. The girl was obviously doing her best to help.”

Pauline, who was born in Cuckfield, West Sussex, couldn’t have grown up in a more horsey environment. “My father was one of the Tulley’s of Sussex. They owned lots of village shops and post offices in Sussex. Cowfold. Bolney. Handcross. And so on. Until the 40’s horses and carts were used to deliver goods to his customers,” she says. “At six years old, I remember, I was at my grandmother’s at Horsham. I was looking at one of our ponies in the field. I was feeding him. Then I got on him and had a ride. When my mother died, I was an only child. It was then that I really fell in love with horses. I didn’t go to shows or anything like that. I just wanted to look after them. Welfare was there in my heart even as a child.” After Pauline finished school, she started to work at a racing yard in Balcombe.

“I used to exercise the race horses around Handcross. Many of them went on to win. “I married at 17. But I carried on riding. Even when I was pregnant . The doctor said I shouldn’t. But I did.

Pauline Grant as a young girl when she began to shoulder her responsibilities for the welfare of horses Pauline Grant as a young girl when she began to shoulder her responsibilities for the welfare of horses

Joanna Price

“Then I moved to Hayling Island. I didn’t ride then. But my daughter did. She was only three years-old at the time. “ In the 1960s, divorced and re-married, Pauline was given a house in Bolney by her father, where she first met Joanna Price.

“I remember I was in the village shop, which used to be owned by the Tulley family, and I met the local vet’s wife. They had a farm at Cowfold and she had started rescuing horses. I got roped in to help her.Between us we started looking after about 30 horses."

“It was shortly after that I met Eileen Bezet, who was with the Dartmoor Livestock Association. With her I then began travelling all over Europe getting evidence about horses in transit. A lot of the evidence ended up in the Press, in the News of the World and other papers. I think it was this that made me decide I wanted to set up my own organised, official horse rescue society."

Pauline now settled in Bolney, sold the house her father had given her and bought Heron Farm, which covered 90 acres, at Ashurst, near Steyning.

“Joanna helped me to set up the Trust. She is still helping me today . She’s one of my Trustees. You couldn’t look for a better friend, “ she says.

At Heron Farm, Pauline was living in a mobile home with more than 70 horses to look after. As if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she also started visiting an elderly lady , Phyllis Creek, who was one of their trustees, who was in hospital. “She was a strange old lady,” says Pauline. “She lived in a cottage in Ashdown Forest. There was no heating. Bare floor boards. It was freezing. Whenever it snowed the snow just blew in through the windows and piled up against the furniture. How she lived there I don’t know.”

<< Pauline Grant

When Phyllis Creek died, however, she left around £1 million to the Trust.

“We couldn’t believe it. It was amazing,” says Pauline. With the money, the Trust bought Hempstead Farm, just outside Uckfield. Today with six staff, Linda McDonnell, the manager and Dailwen, Joe, Sarah, Stephanie and Vicky they look after nearly 100 horses on 165 acres not to mention a collection of turkeys, chickens, guinea fowl and goats. There is even a cockatoo, called Brolly, in a big aviary in Pauline’s office.

The youngest resident is Pedro, a donkey, who was born in 2007. The oldest is a tiny Shetland, Sparky, who is over 30 years old. Cocoa, the donkey, with Sparky, the pony

The Trust is also responsible for around 250 horses which are on permanent loan. Because of the growing work of the Trust, it is, in addition, often the first port of call for the police, the RSPCA or other charitable organisations which discover horses that need rescuing.

Not surprisingly, fund raising is another major issue that keeps Pauline busy. The Trust raises money by all the conventional methods. They have collecting boxes in shops and pubs and newsagents. They have their own shop in Worthing. They organise open days. They encourage people to leave money to them in their will. And so on. They even made their own video which introduced by one of their most famous supporters, William Roach, who plays Ken Barlow in Coronation Street. Joanna Price did the voice-over. But every day the challenge is the same: To rescue and look after horses in desperate need of care.

Says Pauline,
“There will always be horses that need rescuing.
There will always be horses that need looking after.
In some ways, it’s worse now, I think, than when we first started.”

What happened to the girl who rescued the horse outside the pub in Tunbridge Wells? “Five minutes after she called me,” says Pauline, “she rang me back. She said a lot of travellers had turned up. The horses had escaped and were running down the lane, including the horse with her thong still over its head. What am I going to tell my boy friend, she kept screaming.”

Which just goes to prove that running the Sussex Horse Sussex Trust is one thong after another.