News and Reviews
Steven Speilberg vislted the farm last Summer for filming of "War Horse" and was "blown away" by the stunning scenery; Watch Holwell Farm on TV this Summer - BBC2's "Private Lives of Pigs" with Jimmy Doherty; 1 hour from 8pm looking into the intelligence of Pigs - really fascinating Times ReviewHolwell Farm Cottages, Devon
Tastefully converted agricultural buildings for pets and families in the Dartmoor National Park
By Emma Mahony
Read the article on TimesOnline website (external page, new window): http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/holiday_type/family/article1479903.ece Telegraph ReviewBarnyard chic at the five-star farm Agricultural buildings near dartmoor have been converted into stylish cottages. But are holidaymakers prepared to pay £1000 a week? Rory Knight Bruce finds out. In 1901, the farming experimentalist and Lord Chief Justice, HT Eve, carved out an estate of farm buildings, hewn from granite at Holwell, four miles from Widecombe. It was a rich man's pride; a statement in and against the raw nature of the Dartmoor landscape...... Read the rest of the article on Telegraph website
Read Full Article: Barnyard chic at the five-star farm Sunday Mirror ReviewMOOR THE MERRIER DOWN ON THE FARM
TAKE time out in Dartmoor
By Martin Booth
Read the article on SundayMirror website (external page, new window): http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/homesandholidays/holidays/2007/06/03/moor-the-merrier-down-on-the-farm-98487-19231029/
Hampstead & Highgate Gazette AS FERN Britton’s perky voiceover informs you, the owners of Holwell Estate have taken a £2million gamble creating a sustainable farm on Dartmoor.
Last year, risktakers, Philippa and Sebastian Hughes – the subject of reality TV documentary Forgotton Farm – brought this 1901 “model farm” built by Lord Chief Justice Eve into the 21st century.
The couple realised tourists and foodies, and perhaps foodie tourists, were the crop with the highest yield. Mum-of-two, Philippa admits, the livestock, ducks, chickens, saddleback pigs and a herd of Dartmoor ponies at Holwell, constitute “hobby farming”.
The real income comes from the guests who pay £1,000 plus a week to stay in the luxury holiday cottages tastefully created out of a cluster of granite barns and stables.After years owning a string of hotels, the Hughes’ are old hands at the hospitality business. And it shows in the superb added value they offer their guests. Dog beds and towels for pooch owners, a meal in the Aga for tired new arrivals, bottles of wine, or a fridgeful of breakfast supplies, are all available on request.
Guests are also invited to collect their own eggs from the coop and can buy meat - all raised at Holwell or neighbouring farms to cook in the cottages’ range ovens.
The couple are a powerhouse of energy and ideas with future plans to install a sauna, soft play area and offer pony rides across the moor. But more importantly, the Hughes’ are contributing to the adaptation and survival of Dartmoor’s ancient farming community. Innovative ideas such as leasing out their derelict walled garden to a local vegetable and herb grower with insufficient land; (the produce will be available to guests) starting up a farmers’ market in the nearby village of Widecombe, and operating a van selling locally butchered meat to hotels, b&b’s and businesses as far afield as Exeter are generating new income streams for struggling local producers. “Farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to survive,” says Philippa, who feels strongly that Britain’s urban-centric government have done little to support rural communities.“But if the animals disappear and the land is not grazed then Dartmoor will return to scrub. Farmers have to diversify simply to stay in existence and they have to find other markets for their produce.” Philippa, whose husband was brought up on a Dartmoor farm, believes continuing to farm England’s disappearing native breeds is doing their bit for biodiversity and securing “the future of farming”. As a former horse breeder she is also playing her part in cotinuing the pure bloodlines of Dartmoor’s signature ponies who roam across the moor. “There is a real hunger, not necessarily for organic but healthy food that’s traceable - but it has to be convenient. Our animals only have to travel a few miles down the hill to the abbatoir in Ashburton. In the past farmers may have sold a whole or half animal direct, but you have to be realistc, people want small cuts and joints. The only route to survival is working together with tourism to make sure that food outlets supply local food.” When the Hughes’ bought Holwell in 2004 there had been no animals on the land for two decades.They were looking for a family home near their hotel, the Holne Chase at Ashburton.But they fell in love with the estate and its stunning views of hound, honeybag and rippon tors. “When we bought the place we hadn’t even seen inside the main house it was a complete flyer, a huge risk. No-one had farmed animals here for 20 years, it wasn’t viable, yet it had so much potential.” That potential was to offer those views, and the chance to stay inside the Dartmoor National Park among some of Britain’s wildest, most stunning scenery, as a tourist draw. After a day tramping across the moor, or exploring the boulder-strewn rivers in the area, the Hughes’ feel their guests need a spot of luxury. They have converted the former pig sty and stables into ultra-comfy cottages with exposed beams and stone walls, a wood-burning stove in every sitting room, Habitat crockery, fluffy white towels, vast comfy chunky oak beds and large baths with hot water on demand. The Hughes’ have ensured that Holwell is child-friendly with high chairs and cots supplied, and Philippa hopes that urban youngsters’ contact with animals will increase their understanding of where food comes from. Our 18 month-old Joe certainly loved his daily visit to Holwell’s pigs, horses and chickens, as well as riding on one of two toy tractors left for guests, and helping his dad bring in the (free) logs for the fire. Our week at Holwell was super relaxed. Blessed with some crisp, sunny February days we would breakfast on the farm’s sausages while gazing out at the remarkable views of the tors. Our day trips were never more than an hour’s drive away but took in rolling scenery, great food, and a few tourist attractions. One day we bought WI jams in the pretty riverside market town of Tavistock after visiting the quirky Dartmoor Prison museum at Princetown where the lags’ homemade tattoo guns were among the odd items on display. On a glorious sunny Sunday morning we strolled around Catholic Buckfast abbey and bought a noggin of their famously potent tonic wine. To please the little one, we spent a day exploring the beaches, soft play centres and arcades of Torquay. And we even managed to climb one of the easily accessible tors before taking a walk in the glorious grounds of Holne Chase hotel. Most evenings we would buy veg, meat and home baked cakes from the local farm shop near Bovey Tracey for delicious dinners.
For us cramped, stressed out city dwellers, it was food for the soul and the stomach. Countryman Magazine ReviewHow many farmers today are “deliriously happy” to be working the land? Bill Taylor may just have found one. For the past ten years, Philippa and Sebastian Hughes have run Holne Chase Country House Hotel on the southern edge of the Dartmoor National Park. It is much loved and much acclaimed – a highly successful rural business. However, the more the accolades tumbled on to the door mat, the more it seemed that Sebastian longed for a harder life on the high tors of Dartmoor itself. He wanted to get into farming at a time when most sane people were running hard in the other direction. In the winter of 2004, the couple received an anonymous telephone call saying that Holwell Farm might be for sale. Lying in the shadow of Hay Tor, it is a wild and beautiful place, but the farm itself was running to ruin. “It was a November morning when we first saw it,” said Philippa. “We stood in the green lane and the rain was just horizontal – a good old Devon day. The gate was held together with bailer twine and we fell in love with the place. “We thought, ‘Is there any way of doing this?’ Sebastian was desperate to get back into farming. It’s in his family, in his blood. But it was very much a case of our hearts racing against our heads.” That madness has consumed them for the past two years and turned the couple into unlikely television celebrities. Their struggle to save Holwell Farm has been turned into a documentary series now showing on the Discovery Channel. The story goes to the heart of the current debate about whether our future farmers should be park keepers or food producers. “We wanted to find a way of making it a working farm,” said Philippa, “and the only way is to underpin the whole farm is with tourists. If you don’t participate in agriculture, you don’t have a landscape. Farming maintains the land that people want to visit. Without farming we wouldn’t have the tourists; but without the visitors, we certainly wouldn’t have a working farm.” The result is an interesting hybrid. The old pig house, calf house and stables have been turned into five-star holiday cottages with loving and expensive attention to detail. The biggest house sleeps ten people and rents for £1,000 a week. Step outside the patio door, and you’re in the middle of Dartmoor.
Thanks to the income from the cottages, a forgotten farm is coming back to life, with Belted Galloway cattle, Saddleback pigs, a herd of Dartmoor ponies, a flock of free-range chickens and some muddy geese. “We’ve got just under five hundred acres,” said Sebastian. “Economically, we’d be better off doing bugger all. But I just can’t walk through the fields and not use them. If you want to keep the land in good heart, you have to tend it. “The cottages, in turn, do much better because they’ve got a working farm around them. It helps to break down what has become a very serious divide between farm and city. The cottages are a necessity; a good use of farm buildings.” When city children collect their own breakfast eggs from under a warm mother hen, it transforms their shaky understanding of where food comes from. Everyone smiles when a child says: “Can we go and milk the pig now?” But perhaps they will grow up to join a new generation of consumers unhappy with the compromises of cheap imported food. The revival of Holwell is doing its bit to encourage the whole farming economy of Dartmoor. The Hughes have helped set up an agricultural co-operative and their Tor to Tor delivery van takes beef, lamb and pork directly from a range of producer farms to local shops and consumers. The area is lucky to have a small abattoir nearby in Ashburton and Holwell will soon open its own butchering plant. “Yes, we have been viewed by some of our neighbours as upstarts,” smiles Philippa, “but we really do want to farm. Holwell will be successful. We’ve got the right formula. We work together with neighbours to plug the gaps in our own experience. At the same time, there’s an opportunity for other farmers to experience the benefits of selling direct. The signs are very good at the moment. The Tor to Tor meat delivery service is now in profit.” The conversion of the holiday cottages did its bit for the local economy, too. The work was carried out entirely by local tradesmen and wherever possible the couple used materials and suppliers from within a thirty-mile radius. It’s true that the oak for the rustic dining tables came from Wales, but all the furniture was still supplied and fitted by local stores and craftsmen. The present and future prosperity of the countryside is very much on the mind of Sebastian Hughes. “You almost get the sense that Defra wants us to stop farming altogether. They’re not interested in it. But most farmers I talk to would rather have no grants and profitable farms. “God forbid, but what if there’s some disaster overseas? That may change things and temper our appetite for cheap imported food. Everything going on here in Dartmoor shows that there is a growing band of people who want traceability in their food and are prepared to spend a few pennies more to get it.” Not everyone is quite so optimistic. In the documentary series, titled Forgotten Farm, we meet an agricultural adviser who helps Holwell through the bureaucratic maze of applying for the new single farm payment. “Farming is going downhill,” he says. “When I was a youngster, a farmer was a well respected, reasonably prosperous individual. Today, a significant percentage of them are existing in very valuable properties, but living like paupers. Farming today has a good crop of holidaymakers, but will it produce any food?” It will if Sebastian Hughes has anything to do with it. The purchase and restoration of Holwell cost around £2.5 million and already all the revived assets of the farm are thought to have increased substantially in value. The Hughes are serious and successful business people who put their mortgage where their mouth is. The bank manager will be relieved, but that’s not the point. “Sebastian is just deliriously happy to be farming,” says Philippa. How many farmers’ wives today can say that about their men? |
