Deep in the Borrowdale valley, where England is observed in its finest garments, there is ferment in the fields and on the hillsides. The gnarled farming communities who toil with their sheep on these lakeland slopes have prevailed in the face of Vikings, Normans and rampaging Scots for thousands of years and have learned to harness tempests. Now they believe they are in a mortal struggle with what they regard as a more implacable enemy: the National Trust.
The trust, guardian of England’s natural treasures, is one of the biggest landlords in this part of the Lake District. Of the dozen or so farms scattered in these parts, only three are not owned by the NT. That number is now down to two, following the trust’s £950,000 purchase of the land around the historic Thorneythwaite farm.
Yet it is the trust’s decision not to buy the adjoining farmhouse and outbuildings that has caused anger and distress in the valley. The buildings were sold separately to an unknown buyer and will, most likely, become another one of the holiday cottages which make up 60% of the homes here. Thus one of the most beautiful stretches of hill-farming land in England could soon be sacrificed to the National Trust’s lofty vision of “managing the wider landscape”.
It seems that the Lake District has been turned into a scarred landscape where the competing forces of land management, development and conservation are joining battle.
After it was announced last year that 59 hectares of land, including the remote Stickle Tarn and a chunk of the Coniston Water shoreline, were to be sold off, there was uproar locally and at Westminster. In the House of Lords, the Earl of Clancarty pleaded with the government to stop the sale of “some of the most beautiful land in Britain”.
“Stickle Tarn, Coniston Water, the River Derwent: are we really selling off public spaces, some of the most beautiful land in Britain, to fund the building of visitor centres?”
A debate about the very essence and nature of the Lake District National Park is also raging and the battle for Thorneythwaite farm encapsulates it. The farmers are seeking to preserve a way of life which has sustained them and their families for centuries. Others, though, feel that large parts of the Lake District have been shorn of their natural beauty by the persistent adherence to sheep farming and that there is an urgent need for the area’s proper ecosystem to be restored.
The trust stands accused of a strategy of rewilding the uplands of Borrowdale valley by stealth. It was accused of deploying “mafia” tactics in its purchase of the farmland by Melvyn Bragg, a native of Cumbria. In a letter to the Times last week he wrote: “Had a billionaire bullied his way into this disgraceful purchase there would have been a deserved outcry. If the increasingly arrogant National Trust is there to protect anything of our past surely this is a prime example. The National Trust is about to destroy what centuries of working men and women have created. It used a shameful manoeuvre to achieve its aim. Who can check this bullying charity?”
The trust has said it has no plans for rewilding the site at the moment and that it would continue to be farmed.
Peter Edmondson, who works the adjoining Seathwaite farm, had raised what he had thought was enough money to buy Thorneythwaite, only to be outbid by the trust, whose offer was £200,000 above the guide price. The trust responded by claiming that it did not have the cash to buy both land and buildings and had thus offered the significantly higher price for the land for fear that the auctioneer might parcel land and buildings together to secure a higher overall price.
Decades of working these hills have given Edmondson the figure of a spry, lightweight boxer in his prime and on Friday night his attitude was pugilistic when discussing the trust’s conduct. Six generations of his family have farmed this land and he said that the fight to ensure that the traditions of hill farming and sheep farming at Thorneythwaite endure was not over yet.
“I had worked with the bank to raise the finance to purchase Thorneythwaite, but when we arrived at the auction we knew something was afoot.”
Whatever might have been “afoot” will soon form part of a wide-ranging complaint to the Charity Commission about the behaviour of the trust during the bid process.
Edmondson said: “This body used £200,000 of public money to pay well over the market value for this land. And of course it threatens the sheep farming and hill farming tradition in the region that I would have preserved. If they were serious about maintaining the farming tradition they would have purchased the farm buildings too. I simply don’t believe that this massive, state-funded institution couldn’t have come up with the extra cash. Farmers in this valley would have been delighted if they had bought the whole package and signalled their commitment to hill-farming in this area.
“I’ve written to Dame Helen Ghosh, director general of the trust, offering a deal to allow me and others to farm the land properly and to take over the management of the 413 Herdwick sheep that belong to the farm. However, she hasn’t deigned to write back personally. Instead, I’ve had three different letters from three different trust employees, including a ‘correspondence coordinator’ effectively giving me less than two weeks to agree to an unsustainable, one-year tenancy skewed in favour of the trust.”
Edmondson intends to write to his local MP, Labour’s Sue Hayman, and also to Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader whose constituency also takes in much of the Lake District. He is also exploring the possibility of a crowdfunding venture to raise the extra capital in the event that the Charity Commission blocks the trust’s purchase.
In the midst of all of this lies Thorneythwaite farm itself. As dusk began to cast a shadow down the valley, you could see why the handsome, cream-coloured farmhouse and its handful of stone outhouses would fetch a pretty price. From here you can see the valley stretching before you; its green floor honeycombed with quadrants bounded by impressive and immaculate dry-stone dykes.
The hills above that the National Trust, perhaps, and others, are seeking to rewild stand gaunt in the diminishing light like the shoulders of a giant rugby pack. Perhaps they might look better with trees and ferns but there is also beauty in their austerity and in the way of life that the community below has preserved.
In the end it may be that a screech of owls helps to decide the fate of Thorneythwaite farm. Any plans to convert the outbuildings into cottages may be undone if it comes to be known that they are also home to barn owls, a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. Perhaps the new owner ought to find out quickly if his new purchase also comes with a feathered family of tenants whose home is guaranteed by the state.