A VILLAGE nursery that spent four years trying to raise £100,000 for a new building has called time on its dreams.

Windmill Nursery in East Challow, near Wantage, will close this week after 30 years.

Mandy Perkins – who has managed the preschool for 27 years – said staff, volunteers and friends had raised £50,000 to replace its outdated temporary hut with a permanent building, but it was still "nowhere near enough".

The 69-year-old, who lives in East Challow with her husband Dave, always planned to retire this year, but she hoped to be handing the reins over to a new manager.

Instead she is arranging for the nursery to be demolished.

She said: "It wasn't meant to be like this.

"I was going to hand over to someone else – we had even interviewed someone, then we found out the building was irreparable."

Windmill Nursery opened in East Challow Village Hall in 1986.

It ran there for one year, then moved into its temporary building, which was secondhand even then, in the grounds of the village's St Nicholas primary school.

Mrs Perkins took over the reins in its third year.

The temporary building was only supposed to have a lifespan of 20 years, which expired in 2011.

Mrs Perkins, her one member of staff Emma Dawson, and the managing committee of five started trying to raise funds for a permanent building in 2012.

With charity auctions, bake sales and sponsored walks they raised more than £30,000 in the first two years.

In 2014 they applied for and won planning permission to keep using the increasingly outdated old building while they desperately tried to raise another £70,000.

Mrs Perkins said: "We were fundraising for so many years thinking it was all going to come off, but because we're not in a deprived area we're not eligible for grants."

Last month they were told the hut was no longer usable without significant repairs, which would have taken all the money they had raised and would still only be a temporary solution.

Mrs Perkins said: "It's all a bit emotional at the moment, the community has worked so hard and we've looked for other venues but there is nothing in East Challow."

The nursery currently has 21 children on roll: 14 were due to move onto primary school in September, but six were hoping to come back and another nine were on a waiting list to start in October. They will now have to attend other nearby nurseries.

The nursery committee is now discussing what to do with the £50,000 in the bank.

It is hoping it will be able to pass it on to other nurseries and preschools locally but it will also have to spend several thousand on safely demolishing the temporary building.

Mrs Perkins said: "I just always thought it would still be there and the children would keep coming.

"But it's been good, we've only ever had good Ofsted reports, and at least we are going out on a high."