HAMPSHIRE actress Sarah Parish and her husband actor Jim Murray have organised a music festival to raise money for the new Children’s Accident, Emergency and Trauma Unit at Southampton General Hospital.

The Rookwood Festival takes place in Medstead on Saturday featuring Fast & Frank from Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Dodgy, Grant Sharkey, Solar Wolf and Deborah Bonham. Some of our best contemporary home grown country stars will be performing, including Ward Thomas, Ian Easton and Head North.

It will help The Murray Parish Trust raise £2 million needed to build the new children’s unit, which the Government has promised to match with a further £2 million.

Sarah, 47, known for many TV roles including Cutting It, Atlantis and Mistresses, set up The Murray Parish Trust , with her husband, in 2009 in memory of their eight month old daughter Ella-Jayne, who died of congenital heart failure. When they are not working in the film and TV world they dedicate their time to raising funds for the charity. The couple have a second daughter, Nell, aged six.

Since 2009 The Murray Parish Trust have raised over £300,000 for the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at University Hospital Southampton. These vital funds have gone directly towards funding a full time counsellor for parents whose children have been admitted to the unit, a specialist helicopter gurney designed to transport critically ill infants to and from the hospital on board the children’s air ambulance and the provision of two new bed spaces.

Speaking about losing their first daughter Sarah said it was, “an incredibly distressing, life changing time for us and when we finally recovered from the horror of it all we felt an overpowering need to help the people that had given us the short time we’d had with Ella-Jayne.

“The compassion, professionalism and skill of the clinicians that worked there was awe-inspiring. What was also astounding was how desperately they depended on fundraising to provide all the equipment and bed spaces they needed.

So in 2009, The Murray Parish Trust was founded to make sure that this essential unit has the best, up-to-date lifesaving equipment it needs, and the space to use it in.”

She added: “When we lost Ella-Jayne in 2009 our main objective was to become patrons of The Friends of PICU and then we found ourselves doing more and more for them. Then in 2014 we thought it might be worth doing our own charity and branching out more so we founded the trust and built a fantastic team of ambassadors who are all equally as good as each other. And then we lobbied George Osbourne for £2 million - and never thought he would support us. And that’s when people started sitting up and taking notice of us with the Government backing us. “

After a very successful Echo-backed #SayYesGeorge campaign, the Chancellor George Osborne agreed in his spring budget to fund-matching this cause. The government have pledged £2 million so it is the charity’s mission to raise the additional £2 million to make the new, life-saving department a reality.

Initially Sarah and Jim handled their grief by going to Cambodia for two months to work at an orphanage.

“We had to get out because there is nothing worse than being surrounded by people asking if you are all right. You are not all right but you don’t want to talk about it all the time. Cambodia was the best thing we could have done. I remember one person telling me to go and lie on a beach but I couldn’t think of anything worse.”

Sarah says she did a lot of gardening in 100-degree heat, planting pumpkin seeds. Jim was in charge of watering, which involved fetching heavy buckets of water from a snake-filled creek in the raging sun.

Their work with the Murray Parish Trust has since been a comfort to them: “In a way it keeps her memory alive and the more children we can save because of what happened to Ella-Jayne the better. It’s a good thing to do rather than to harbour it and keep that grief going. It’s healing. There is only one way to numb the pain of losing a child and that is to help other children. To try and make a difference to their lives and help give them the future they deserve.”

They are very excited about the festival which they have been planning for 18 months.

“It’s been really, really interesting but exhausting. A lot of things were begged, borrowed or ‘stolen’ and a lot of people are doing it in return for just food and beer. Our sponsors have given us loads of money and everyone has pitched in. The profit should be substantial: we hope to raise between £15,000 and £20, 000.

“We think this is Medstead’s answer to Coachella. We’ve got an amazing line up of artists, Gypsyjam Collection are making the site look out of this world. The support has been amazing with huge thanks to Upham Brewery, Flack Manor, Triple fff, West Berkshire and Itchen Valley Breweries, Steve’s Leaves, Willbox, our brilliant porta cabin guys, Sandown Mercedes for loaning us chauffer cars. All of which means all the proceeds will go towards our £2million target to match the £2 million funding the government have also pledged.”

Meanwhile Sarah will be joining the cast of Broadchurch for it’s third series being filmed in Dorset this summer and there will be an as yet unannounced play in the West End this year too. And she is filming the spoof BBC documentary series W1A again early in the New Year.

Rookwood Tickets from £20 (students) up to £50 (adults) with various deals. Camping tickets available too. Visit www.rookwoodfestival.co.uk/shop.