The one commonality between people who buy a conservatory is that they often have a purpose to the beautiful traditional extension, but what can often differ is exactly what this purpose is.
Most people want a room to enjoy their garden year-round, whilst others are interested in a larger dining and entertaining area. Others still want a storage space for at least some of the year, whilst there are those that have rather more interesting plans.
For Jean Turner, conservatories became the ideal hedgehog hospital for her, and she has dedicated eight years of her life to caring for the prickly mammals.
The Hedgehog Hospital
The origins of Hedgehog Rescue Blackpool came from a then-72-year-old Ms Turner, who had a lifelong love of animals and wanted to care for them, even if she was not initially sure how she would do so.
The turning point came when her sister brought a hedgehog from her garden to Ms Turner’s home for her to have a look at. Another friend from Preston did the same with a little hedgehog.
She was not a veterinarian but she was willing to learn and started to look up ways to take care of hedgehogs. Sure enough, the little critter would make a full recovery, although Jean always knew that there was an element of luck involved.
There was a chance it could have had a disease or some form of parasite that would have meant she had no chance of saving it, but ultimately she did and that began the genesis of a vocation that has taken up eight years of her life so far.
It started out on a small scale in her conservatory, quickly learning and adapting but ultimately she was only able to help out a few hedgehogs. She knew that if she wanted to keep caring for more than a few hedgehogs at a time she would need to take it more seriously.
To that end, she invested £10,000 that she had saved up over a lifetime to buy and install veterinary pods and incubators into her conservatory, garage and shed, which allows her to this day to take care of up to 50 hedgehogs at any one time, and she takes in around 600 per year in total.
She also started to enlist the help of volunteers and foster carers who come each morning to clean, weigh and feed the animals, whilst she sorts out their medication and injections in the early morning, as well as organising trips to the vets and to the 60 release points for hedgehogs in good health.
Over 50 volunteers are involved in the hedgehog hospital, still based centrally in Jean’s conservatory.
In 2020, Hedgehog Rescue Blackpool became a registered charity, giving her access to grants and extra assistance, and whilst she has noted that it has taken over her life and can be upsetting when some hedgehogs are too sick to survive that it is an incredibly welcoming vocation.
She did advise, however, that if people want to do something similar and turn their conservatory into a mini-sanctuary that they should start small and keep it small unless they can make that huge commitment.