THE Women’s Refuge has received a boost after the Walcot Charity Shop and Library donated £500 to help create an animal garden.

The shop in Sussex Square, which tries to support the community whenever it can, regularly donates to the refuge to help the youngsters who are also supported there.

Peter Mallinson, the chairman of the Walcot Community Charity Shop, said: “We are so grateful to the Women’s Refuge and they are a great support to us and regularly donate children’s clothes and toys to the shop, which then go to support people in the community. “We then donate money to the refuge two or three times a year because it’s a really worthy cause, and it’s really to help the children. So it’s a three-way thing.”

The library and shop is one of the few in the country to be run entirely by volunteers, and is a lifeline to many in one of the country’s most deprived communities.

Peter said: “The ethos of the shop is that we are a charity shop which is one of the cheapest in the town by far, and that all the money we receive after paying our overheads gets fed back into the community at some point. “We are run entirely by volunteers so there are no staff to pay, and we only have to pay the bills.”

To find out more about the charity shop and library, visit www.facebook.com/pages/ Walcot-Charity-Shop-And-Library/267882539978498.