Racehorse trainer in house fire is home for Christmas

Local community helps enable Oliver Sherwood to spend Christmas in Lambourn tomorrow (Sunday)

RACEHORSE trainer Oliver Sherwood, whose home was nearly gutted by fire last month, will be spending Christmas with his family in Lambourn after all.

Mr Sherwood, who shared the Sheepdrove Road home with wife Tarnya, son Archie, aged 13 and 17-year-old daughter Sabrina, watched in horror as more than half the building was consumed in the flames on the night of November 23 (pictured).

Since then, he said, friends in the local community and racing fraternity have rallied round with offers of help.

Nevertheless, with Christmas looming, they were effectively homeless.

Now, however, they will be among friends for the festive season after all.

Mr Sherwood, who has sent out more than 800 winners from his yard, Shonehurst, including six Cheltenham Festival winners, said: “We shall be staying at the stables. The people to whom we sold them some years ago are in Dubai until February and very kindly invited us to stay until they return.

Meanwhile rebuilding work at the home continues.

Mr Sherwood said: “It will almost have to completely rebuilt. It won't be habitable again until another nine months, at the earliest. But I'd like to say again that local people have been wonderful, first class.”

At the time, he said he and his family were lucky to be alive and added: “Thank goodness it was 8pm and not 2am because otherwise I believe we wouldn't have got out.”

He said his daughter initially feared that notes for her sixth form studies had been lost but added: “A lot of them have been retrieved electronically. I think she is more looking forward, as a 17-year-old girl, to replacing her wardrobe.”