The Saint Sanctuary was first established in 1939 during the second world war by a man who went by the name of William Burgess, or Bill to the people who knew him. It started one day when he was contacted by the R.A.F. from 633 squadron to take some working dogs over to Canada, Carlo and Carline two beautiful German Shepards.  Unfortunately Canada could not take them in at that time so they were flown back to Bill along with another German Shepard called Chain. Bill took in the three dogs and cared for them, but unbeknown to Bill, word was getting around he was taking in dogs to his farm. “Many is the time I have woken up to find as many as four dogs tied to the farm gates” he said, abandoned by people who could no longer care for their animals. Within the space of two years we had 80 dogs and 60 cats.

As time went on the farming community depended less and less on work animals. The farming industry had started to evolve, which led to the introduction of machinery. At this point Bill’s wife Doris-May Burgess had started to take in horses as well. By this time the farm was fully functional, producing beef, milk, grain and butter. Some of which went back into the farm to feed the animals in care.

In the 1950’s, Bill and Doris Mays son Derek started helping out around the farm. One of Derek’s duities was to take sick animals to the vets.  The problem with this was he always ended up bring back more animals than he went with.  Even if he just went down to the local shops people would stop him and ask him if he could take in animals. The farm was really getting quite busy.

It wasn’t long before time rolled on into the 60’s and 70’s in which Granddaughter Brenda Burgess also started to get involved at a mere 12 years old.  She became interested in training the dogs they had. One particular day, Brenda got word of a rather ferocious dog that was to be put down because of its unruly behaviour. Brenda did not agree with this action and decided to take the dog under her wing and start training him. Brenda did so well with the dog that she started showing dogs professionally in shows and this particular ferocious dog went on to become an obedience champion! It was also around this time in 1976 that the founder of the farm and Sanctuary William Burgess passed away leaving the running of the farm to his son Derek and granddaughter Brenda.

When  Brenda left school she started taking in giant breeds and also showing them very successfully. In 1983 Waddington village was becoming bigger and bigger, which unfortunately meant that the farm had to be moved to more suitable premises, in this case North Hykeham. By this point Brenda had become so good at training dogs they were starring in shows like Jeeves and Wooster, Calendar and Labatts lager commercials.

In 1995 Brenda had to take over full-time care of the refuge when her father Derek Burgess passed away. Once again handing down the legacy to a third generation. As you can imagine Brenda’s days are somewhat busy and varied what with the running of the refuge and tending to the animals.  North Hykeham is fast becoming a large suburb of Lincoln which means the sanctuary has to look for new premises yet again. At present we are looking after twenty plus horses, 22 dogs and about the same in cats.