THE man who made headlines after launching a raffle to sell his north Lancashire manor house has pledged £25,000 of the ticket sales proceeds to a Lancaster hospice.

Dunstan Low and his family live in the village of Melling in a six bedroom 1792 property called Melling Manor.

Having bought the house in 2011 when his marketing company was growing, Mr Low has since fallen on difficult times.

However, instead of handing his home back to the bank, he came up with the innovative idea of selling £2 raffle tickets with his house as the prize.

Mr Low said: "In debt for almost five years, we felt so alone and struggled to see a way out of our situation. When the public started to hear about our story we were overwhelmed by the level of empathy and encouragement. We felt touched that people identified with our situation.”

The family are now close to reaching their goal, with only 150,000 more tickets needed to be sold.

“We decided that we wanted to add a pledge to a charity if we reached our target of £1 million worth of tickets," Mr Lowe said. "With the admin costs and legal/professional fees involved in running such a raffle, we will be able to walk away debt free and start a new life. It’s not about making lots of money from this project; we want to live a much simpler life, with minimal stress going forwards!"

The £25,000 donation will go towards St John's Hospice, which provides palliative care for people with a wide range of life shortening conditions.

"We immediately thought of St John’s Hospice as an excellent beneficiary and announced we would donate £25,000 to the local hospice should we sell all our tickets," Mr Low said. "My wife has lost a close family friend last year and was blown away by the level of care and compassion."

For more information about the house and to take part in the competition, visit: www.winacountryhouse.com