A fire and flood-hit animal rescue centre has cleared its vet bill after a successful fundraiser.

Spirits Rest Dartford Horse and Animal Sanctuary put on a family fun day on Saturday, August 27 to say thank you to the community for all the help it received when it had a fire earlier in the year.

In July, the sanctuary was threatened by a huge grass fire, which occurred just 20 yards from the trees at the back of the stables. As a result, hundreds of people came together to offer their support.

Then last week after the county was gripped by storm and rain, they ended up flooding as after the heatwave the top layer of earth had been scraped off to make a barrier around the property.

This meant that the rain ran off the land and ended up in the stables, feed room and barn.

After a troubled few weeks, Christine Bates, who has run the sanctuary for 33 years, decided to say thank you for all the support from the community.

She said: "We only put one poster up, we didn't expect it to be so busy. In the end we had probably about 400 people come along.

"Thirty-two people registered to volunteer, and we're going to have an induction in a couple weeks for all of them to come along to.

"We're planning on expanding next year so it'll be really helpful to have more people.

"We're part of the local church and based on a multicultural estate so there was a wide mix of people and it was really nice to see everyone coming together."

At the fun day, there was a raffle, stalls, and Swanscombe resident Vicki Baird came along and provided cakes for free and had a biscuit station for the children.

Money raised meant that it was able to pay off its vet bill, which was just over £900 in total.

Christine added: "It also means we can take in more animals who need our help and care.

"I was able to take a cat in a few days ago, the whole process of getting it neutered costs around £200 and we were able to take it in.

"Obviously food prices have gone up – a lot of the bedding and food comes from Russia and obviously that's had to stop now.

"The food here can be double the price, and we've lost all our grazing so we've also had to buy more hay, which has also doubled in price.

"First we had to relocate, then Covid hit, then high temperatures meant no grazing, then there were wildfires, and now we've flooded.

"After all this it was nice to see the community come together.

"Thank you to everyone who raised money running stalls giving their time and goods freely."