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On the 3,500-acre Knepp Castle estate, home
of the Burrell family for more than 200
years, the land and the animals living there
are being left “to do their own thing”
in a scheme described as “the most daring
wildlife and farming experiment in Britain
for years”.
Once a traditional dairy and arable farm,
the estate is undergoing ''rewilding’’
under the direction of Charles Burrell, the
affable 46 year-old who has had stewardship
of the estate since he was 21.
For 15 years Burrell farmed his land as a
highly intensive agricultural system, with a
sizeable workforce, arable and grain crops
growing in well-sprayed fields, three
dairies, a plant nursery and milk-bottling
plant that also produced luxury ice-cream
and yogurts.
Despite all the effort and huge capital
expenditure, the enterprise was uneconomic.
Burrell was also uneasy with the visual and
ecological impact that modern farming was
having on the estate and particularly the
magnificent parkland, landscaped by Humphrey
Repton in the early 19th century.
“We could hardly tell the park existed
as the fields of wheat and ryegrass covered
the land right up to the castle door,” he
says. “The trees were suffering, too. The
outlook and pressure of intensive
agriculture was beginning to be felt.”
But a new dawn was about to break – and
with it the beginning of an experiment
unique to lowland Britain. It began modestly
in 2001 when Burrell took 500 acres out of
production and restored the park, the core
of the estate, with the help of the
Countryside Stewardship Scheme, replanting
his cornfields with native grasses and
wildflowers.
“The sense of relief in just letting go
was extraordinary,” he says. “Suddenly,
I was looking out on to land that was doing
its own thing, and on cattle and deer that
were able to wander where they liked and eat
what they liked. Within three years, we were
kicking up common blue butterflies every
other foot. We’d never seen a common blue
in the park before then. It seemed an
obvious step to expand the idea and rewild
the whole estate, if we could.”
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In 2002, Burrell sought inspiration by
travelling to Oostvaardersplassen, a
remarkable reserve in the Netherlands. The
14,000-acre tract of uninhabited fen, scrub,
woodland and wild grassland was reclaimed
from the sea just 40 years ago and set aside
for wildlife. It is now populated with
ancient free-roaming Heck cattle, Konik
horses and wild birds.
Fired up by his visit, he set to work
adapting the model for the Knepp estate.
Tearing down internal gates and fences, he
replaced his dairy cows with a herd of Old
English Longhorn cattle and introduced
Exmoor ponies, fallow deer and Tamworth pigs
which he set loose to roam at will.
Once the old rhythms of sowing and
harvesting had been abandoned, the grazing
animals drove the habitat changes and within
three years his fields became a mass of
thistles, knee-high grasses and wild-sown
trees.
The once-silent fields now thrum with
insects and bird song and a baseline survey
in 2005 recorded innumerable birds,
including skylarks, whitethroats, blackcaps,
nightingales, stonechats, woodlark and
buzzards. Water voles have also been
spotted, as well as several nationally rare
lepidoptera, beetles, bees and Barbastelle
and Bechstein’s bats.
Burrell has now enclosed a further 1,000
acres and plans to allow a 1.5-mile stretch
of the River Adur, canalised in the 18th
century, to meander naturally across his
land, to herald the return of seasonal
flooding and attract even more wildlife.
It’s the biggest proposed stretch of river
to be naturalised in Britain.
The project has captured the imagination
of scientists and wildlife experts, though
Burrell stresses there’s no specific goal:
“It’s just a grand experiment and if it
hasn’t worked within the next 15 years
when my children are due to take over, then
the whole thing could be grubbed up with
modern machinery pretty damn quick. But I
think it will work and it’s important that
it should. As for whether my children will
want to take on this madcap project… well,
they’ve been conditioned to it. They think
it’s perfectly normal for dad to be
chasing the pigs!”
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