Rauceby Hall Events is in a major dilemma. We love opening our grade 2 listed garden for events and for your enjoyment.

I am sure that you may have seen our post in December that on the evening 8th of December we had our garage broken into and our Kubota compact tractor, an Ifor Williams trailer and all our power tools were stolen by some questionable beings that have no respect for us little people that strive to work for a living and provide a beautiful environment for the public to enjoy.

Since then, we have been unable to attend to this beautiful environment to the degree that we would wish. We have discovered that we were grossly under insured. We have had to let one of our treasured gardeners go. Someone who has worked on the garden and estate for over 30 years, due to the lack of equipment to carry out the tasks needed to keep the gardens in the condition that we strive for daily.

It has crippled our resolve. It has taken much soul searching to find the appetite to continue with what we all hold truly dear to our hearts.

We are fortunate that our insurance company the NFU, has been incredibly fair with us, but it has left a huge shortfall on being able to replace everything that was taken from us.

We are now having to look at changing all aspects of security, we and our insurers cannot afford for us to continue to be victims.

With that in mind we will have to install CCTV, a more secure storage facility and to eradicate any further potential exposure from the unscrupulous individuals that have perpetrated this heinous act.

They are not stopping. On Friday 23rd of January they attempted another break in. It is the same individuals as they expected to find everything replaced to benefit from brand new equipment to steal.

We have never been in this position before. We have no intention of allowing ourselves to continually be a target.

Therefore, although we do not feel comfortable in asking for help, we are hoping that crowdfunding may be a way of being able to get to a point where we can still open our gates to you our public and supporters of this gem in the Lincolnshire countryside.

We need to be able to find a way of affording a 20ft shipping container with additional security such as burglar proof locking system, a plethora of CCTV cameras, and the replacement of our faithful Kubota compact tractor with 54” cutting deck and Clam shell collection box and all the power tools. Although our insurance will assist with a proportion of this, we may well be short of in the region of £10,000 to get to a point where we can operate to the level, we were able to before the crime took place.

We have had to take the decision with regret to cancel the two early events of our calendar, Snowdrop Sunday and Daffodil Sunday, so we can concentrate on replacing the missing machinery and finding adequate security and secure storage.

Hopefully we will be back on track for our Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday. At this point without begging, borrowing or praying for an act of God, even that looks an unsurmountable challenge.

Please if you feel you can help, we will be totally indebted to you. Maybe there are companies out there that might be able to support us through these desperate times.

For all those that can help, we will want to give a big thank you in the summer and we start a group “The Friends of Rauceby Hall”, which will ensure privileges, such as special visiting rights and the option to plant a tree on the estate in your name that you can also visit at special friend events, as you will be forever in our hearts.