Station Road, Beckford, Nr Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 7AN Tel: 01386 882288 Email: info@valewildlife.org.uk Registered Charity No: 702888

How it all began, by Vale's founder Caroline Gould.

Vale Wildlife Hospital started in 1984 in our family home (right) in the village of Cropthorne in Worcestershire.
Although I had always had an interest in animals, I had never really given any thought to the difficulties that
wild animals encounter when their paths cross with ours.
Everything changed the day a local vet contacted me to ask if I would look after an injured tawny owl that had been taken to his practice.

It made me think about the huge number of wild animals which must be suffering out there, with no-one to help
them despite most of their injuries being caused by humans, albeit unintentionally most of the time.
From that day, I was determined to do what I could to help these casualties.

Fast forward 8 years, with a long story including many highs and even more lows in between, and in 1992 Vale
moved to the present site in Beckford, between Tewkesbury and Evesham.
The house was sold and the money was used to buy a mobile home to live in, with the remainder of the money going towards the buying of the land and various other equipment, aviaries and enclosures.
The land we purchased was literally a ploughed field without even a blade of grass on it. We had to seed the whole
area by hand and wait for the grass to grow before we could do anything. Our first 'hospital' was a 16' portacabin
which was replaced by a much larger, ex-builders workshop donated to us the following year (pictured below).
However, after a few years the portacabin started to fall apart and more decisions had to be made about the
future of Vale Wildlife.
In the late 1990's we were granted planning permission for our present hospital building and we set about raising
over £200,000 to achieve this. We moved in to our new facilities in July 2001.

One of the biggest problems that I encountered when I first started taking in and rehabilitating wildlife,

bearing in mind that I didn't have a clue what I was doing, was that it was almost impossible to find anyone
with experience who was prepared to give me any advice.
Speaking to other people who have set up since then, this problem is still the same today.

This secretive attitude does nothing to encourage more people to take up this line of work and certainly
does nothing to help the injured wildlife.
If anyone new to wildlife rehabilitation needs any help or advice, I am happy to do my best to assist,
and I can usually speak to Tim, our vet, for more advice if necessary.

If you need advice, please ring Caroline on 01386 882288 or email me.

Our first proper hospital building on our Beckford site, a builder's workshop.