AN unnamed businessman has rescued an animal refuge threatened with closure by giving it a low-interest loan of more than £140,000.

The Only Foals and Horses Sanctuary in Oswaldtwistle has run a desperate two-year campaign to raise £200,000 for the site it currently rents.

The deadline for raising the cash ran out on Monday but the benefactor, a retired Suffolk businessman, stepped in to make up a shortfall of £40,400.

He had already pledged a £100,000 low-interest loan to the sanctuary at Redshell Stables, off Haslingden Road.

Co-ordinator Olive Lomas said today: "We have been in touch with him all the time over the past 12 months but it all came to a head with the deadline on January 31.

"We thought that he may have hinted that he had this at the back of his mind but that he wanted us to do all we could up to the last minute to raise as much as we could.

"We are just very, very grateful. We just can't believe it. It is a great relief.

"He has never been to the sanctuary but he will be paying us a visit.

"We are now waiting until everything is finalised."

The sanctuary, which would have had to find an alternative site if the cash had not been found, has provided a safe haven for hundreds of ill-treated and unwanted animals over the past five years.

It provides a home for 85 foals, ponies and horses, 24 goats, 15 pigs and five sheep.

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