Elisabeth was minding her own business. At least that’s what she told herself. The business in question was not insignificant, not unimportant. A farmhouse once stood on the same site, located in the small town of Ottery St Mary in Devon. Out of its ashes rose a grand house in the style of an Elizabethan mansion, built and owned by the family of the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The last Coleridge sold the Grade II-listed building in 1950. Nine years after that, Elisabeth and her husband, Niels, bought Salston Manor (and its six acres of farmland), turning it into a hotel.
Elisabeth and Niels weren’t veterans of the hotel industry. Nappies were more their thing. They had built up and sold a successful nappy-drying business. Nevertheless, for the next decade Elisabeth applied all of her business skills to minding the hotel business. Until she met Naughty Face in 1969. Unable to resist her charms, Elisabeth paid £45 for her first donkey. Nor could she contemplate the idea of Naughty Face being lonely, so she bought Angelina, thus becoming the proud owner of two happy donkeys.
One husband, two donkeys, four children, a manor-sized hotel and farmland to manage, Elisabeth didn’t need, didn’t have time for any other distractions. As with so many people who become extraordinary philanthropists, Elisabeth was busy getting on with her life. She certainly wasn’t on the road to Exeter one day in 1970 seeking a conversion to philanthropy or thinking about how she might change the world.
Yet, by the time she was driving home that day, something had happened to Elisabeth, something totally unexpected, deeply troubling, upsetting and at the same time, energising. She had a new resolve. She wouldn’t wait for approval, a balancing of the books or that distant, mythical future when the children had grown up, when she had time on her hands and plenty of cash in the bank. This was something she had to do now.
In Exeter’s crowded market Elisabeth had spotted a pen of fewer than 10 donkeys so mercilessly crammed into a tiny space she was moved to tears. A first unsuccessful attempt to buy the weakest-looking donkey did not deter her. Elisabeth got to know the road to Exeter very well over the next three years, backwards and forwards, again and again, to buy donkeys, the blind ones, the old, the beaten, the beach has-beens. She could not stop herself.
By 1973 Elisabeth owned no fewer than 38 donkeys. The time had come, she knew, to channel all of her energy and compassion into creating a structure and sustainable mechanism that would have a much wider impact than she could ever achieve buying one donkey at a time. What would become one of the world’s best-known charities, The Donkey Sanctuary, was born in Sidmouth that year.
If Elisabeth had any thoughts about turning back, of finding other homes for her donkeys and acknowledging that she had at least done something, they disappeared in the following year as quickly as hotel profits in barley straw. Unbeknown to Elisabeth, her fame had already reached Reading 164 miles away.
Towards the end of her life, Violet Philpin had heard of the Devon donkey rescuer and realised that her own work in saving donkeys had not been in vain. In June 1974 Elisabeth received a phone call out of the blue from the Executor of Violet’s Estate. Violet had left her a legacy of 204 donkeys. How that translated into barley straw didn’t bear thinking about. Elisabeth would turn her mind instead to the possibilities. As the new charity began to attract donations as well as donkeys, she started looking for ways to do more.
Over the next 35 years Elisabeth’s Donkey Sanctuary developed a comprehensive programme of donkey-assisted activities for the wellbeing of thousands of children with additional learning needs. Elisabeth went further. She created a second charity, the Elisabeth Svendsen Trust for Children and Donkeys, specifically to give disabled and special needs children the opportunity to meet donkeys and ride them to boost confidence and co-ordination.
For The Donkey Sanctuary, a specialist donkey hospital was built in Sidmouth; new satellite sanctuaries and partnerships were established in Ireland, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Caribbean, Spain and Cyprus. Closer to home for Elisabeth as a Yorkshire lass, an activities centre was established in Leeds, and also one in Manchester. None of this happened without problems, heartbreak, loss and sacrifice. Barley straw costs.
In Elisabeth’s way of thinking it was dangerous to depend on grants so she didn’t apply for them, relying instead on donations. By the time she died in May 2011, The Donkey Sanctuary was operating in 28 countries worldwide and generating annual income that exceeded £22 million. It continues to grow. More recently, in 2024, it has celebrated a major achievement having campaigned for global donkey welfare for decades. At the African Union Summit in Ethiopia African heads of state agreed to a ban on the slaughter of donkeys for their skin across the continent.
The truth is that Dr Elisabeth Svendsen MBE never worried too much about the cost of barley straw. The welfare of donkeys always came first. “The donkey has always helped man in most parts of the world,” she once said. “It still does, and it never asks for anything in exchange. They are such humble little creatures, but they are extremely loving.”