A £50,000 fundraising campaign has been launched to help a popular country park recover from damage inflicted by Storm Arwen.
Haddo House and Country Park has announced that due to the “momentous amount of work” required to repair the site, it will not reopen in 2021.
Trees were torn down around the National Trust for Scotland property, blocking the paths and bridges and leaving the the grounds too dangerous to access.
The house itself is “largely unharmed”, but will stay closed until the 2022 season while workers carry out the extensive work necessary to make the site safe.
A post on the building’s Facebook page said: “We are so relieved that the structures escaped damage, we can replant, but Haddo House, the beautiful chapel, or the pheasantry within the park, are irreplaceable.”
The enormous old beech tree, located on the approach to the pheasantry, is also confirmed to be still standing.
Now a JustGiving page was launched with the aim of raising £50,000 to go towards the “decimated” site’s recovery.
Pictures from the area show vast swathes of forest flattened by the extreme weather, which caused large amounts of damage across the north-east.
A post from the Haddo House and Country Park Facebook page on Tuesday, thanking fans of the property for their offers of support, attracted dozens of comments from people horrified by the state of the grounds.
One woman wrote: “So very sad to see such devastation.
“It really shows the amount of work needed over many years to get this jewel back to its former glory.
“Not sure the damage this must have done to the birds and animals that normally reside in the woods.”
Ideas suggested by the community included sponsoring trees and selling cross sections of trunks from trees that were split in the storm.
Another social media commenter also expressed concern for the area’s wildlife, saying: “Heartbreaking, we live not far from Haddo and it is our favourite place to walk – a life saver in the lockdown.
“And over the 37 years prior to Covid – love the idea of sponsoring a tree – worried about the red squirrel population.”
Crathes Castle, another National Trust for Scotland property near Banchory, has also barred visitors from entering due to the dangers posed by tree damage in the grounds.
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