Wetheral Open for Appointments Only

12th July 2026

Important Update from Oak Tree Animals' Charity

It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we must announce that from Thursday 9th July the Oak Tree Animals' Charity site at Wetheral, including the tearoom, will not be open to general public access until critical infrastructure has been repaired and renewed.  

We will be continuing the care for our animals and our rehoming services throughout this period. Potential adopters will still be able to meet our animals by appointment.

Many of our supporters will remember the devastating flooding we experienced last year. Thanks to your incredible generosity, we were able to carry out essential repairs to keep our kennels and cattery safe. However, the flood caused extensive underground damage to our drainage system and this now needs complete replacement. We also need to make significant improvements to other critical infrastructure to make it work securely across our site.  

The scale of both of these projects will cause significant disruption and, in order to protect the safety of our staff, animals and supporters, a temporary closure is our only viable course of action.

This measure will allow us to focus our limited resources on caring for the animals who depend on us, while we continue to address these significant infrastructure challenges.

What this means..

• Animal adoptions and viewings will continue, but by appointment only.
• External fundraising events organised by our fundraising team will still go ahead as planned.
• Supporters will still be able to drop off donations in the container in the front carpark.
• All of our retail shops will remain open as usual.
• The InPost lockers will remain open.

The estimated repair and renewal bills for these two projects total more than £1.5million, so we need your support now more than ever. Every donation, fundraising effort, and message of encouragement helps us to continue providing care for vulnerable animals during this extremely challenging period.

We will work to keep our supporters updated as soon as we have further news and will share any developments regarding progress and the future of public access to our site.

Thank you for standing with us through this difficult time and for continuing to support the animals who need us most.

The Oak Tree Animals' Charity Team