THE Murray Parish Trust has announced plans for a new charity music festival in aid of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Southampton General Hospital.

To be known as the Rookwood Music Festival, the live music event will take place in Medstead on June 4 and will field an impressive line up of talent including Frank & Fast’s Fun Loving Criminals DJ set, Ward Thomas, and Dodgy.

Open from 4pm to 1am, there will be two stages, refreshments and stalls across the 14-acre site at Rookwood House – the site of the original Rookwood Festival in 2002.

The new Rookwood event is the brainchild of actors Sarah Parish and Jim Murray, of nearby Ovington, and the event committee hopes to attract more than 1,000 visitors to maximise the fundraising potential for their charity, The Murray Parish Trust.

The couple set up the charity after their eight-month-old daughter, Ella-Jayne, tragically died following a traumatic premature birth at Southampton Hospital.

The couple pledged to raise £1m in her memory to help fund the expansion of the children’s unit, and with all profits from the event being donated it will be the third major fundraiser they have organised, seeing them well on their way to hitting this ambitious target.

Festivalgoers will be treated to 12 bands and new names will be announced as they are confirmed. The present line up has impressive chart credentials, with Fun Loving Criminals scoring eight top 40 singles since the 1990s, and Dodgy, who’s hit Good Enough reached number four in the UK singles chart in the 1990s.

Of particular interest is Ward Thomas, the sister duo who have taken the UK country scene by storm since arriving on the music scene in 2014. The sisters, Catherine and Lizzy Ward-Thomas, have already had a number one album on the iTunes Country Chart, and won UK Album of the Year at the British Country Music Awards.

Tickets, priced £50 for adults and £20 for children aged 10 to 17 (under-10s free with an accompanied full-paying adult) can be bought online at murrayparishtrust.com/rookwood.