Heather Nicholson - Activism - Consort Beagles and Save The Hill Grove Cats

Consort Beagles and Save The Hill Grove Cats

Nicholson became involved in the animal rights movement when she was 26, after attending a demonstration at Swansea airport to protest against live animal exports. During a similar demonstration at Coventry airport, she met her future husband, Greg Avery, another animal rights activist. She joined Avery to found a campaign against Consort, a company in Ross-on-Wye that bred beagles for laboratories, which closed 10 months later. Nicholson and Avery co-founded a subsequent campaign, Save the Hill Grove Cats, which saw the closure two years later of Hill Grove Farm near Oxford, which bred laboratory cats. The couple then set up SHAC in 1999, along with Natasha Constance Dellemagne, a friend of Nicholson's, with the aim of forcing Huntingdon Life Sciences to capitulate using the Consort and Hill Grove tactics. The company was saved when the British government stepped in to provide it with banking facilities, after the UK's major banks severed ties with it as a result of the campaign.

Nicholson and Avery divorced in or around 2002, but continued to live and work together. In 2002, Avery married Natasha Dellemagne, now known as Natasha Avery, and the three of them lived for a time together in a rent-free cottage in Woking, Surrey. The cottage was owned by Virginia Jane Steele, also known as Alexander, a wealthy supporter of the animal rights movement.