When new rules in the 1980s encouraged farmers to “set aside” some arable fields from crop-growing to reduce EU-wide overproduction, Hugh White rebelled.
“He said: ‘If you don’t want my corn, I’ll put the whole lot in set-aside,’” remembers the farmer’s son, Graham White. And so in 1988, cultivation ceased abruptly on all 153 hectares (377 acres) of Strawberry Hill farm in rural Bedfordshire.
Long before “rewilding” was invented, White’s wheatfields became rough grassland and a haven for barn owls.
Five years later, when government funding for his set-aside had finished, White appeared on the TV show Countryfile to urge the authorities to help keep his fields wild.
White was once a passionate champion of conventional farming but had found a new vocation – as a wild barn owl farmer. Strawberry Hill’s vole-filled meadows and disused barns produced more than 200 barn owl chicks within a decade.
Fortunately, government funds were found, which enabled White to continue his unique rewilding experiment for a further 20 years.
Strawberry Hill blossomed into a wilderness of scrubby hawthorn, blackthorn and wildflower glades – a haven for endangered nightingales, turtle doves, dragonflies, orchids and other rare wildlife in the heart of intensively farmed Bedfordshire.
Now conservationists are campaigning to raise £1.5m to save the farm once more for wildlife.
After White died, and later his wife, his family hoped to find new owners that would respect the farmer’s legacy. Bedfordshire Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN) wildlife trust has bought half the former farm thanks to funds from Biffa and has launched a crowdfunding to buy the other half, which is unprotected by conservation designations.
Marbled white butterflies jink through sunny glades as blackcaps and whitethroats sing from groves of young oak as the Guardian explores the farm with Brian Eversham, the chief executive of BCN.
Eversham was alerted to the impending sale by the environmentally minded Labour peer Barbara Scott Young, who lives nearby. “She called me and said: ‘I need you to come and see this place.’ I fell in love with it immediately,” said Eversham.
On the first evening he visited to listen for nightingales he heard eight singing within half an hour. “I thought that was good but then we explored the whole site and eight became 30. We quickly realised that about half the nightingales left in Bedfordshire are here.”
Strawberry Hill has become the largest area of scrubland in central England, in a county that is a byword for intensive agriculture and nature loss. Only 1.2% of Bedfordshire is protected for wildlife by the site of special scientific interest designation.
Wildflower seeds carried in the wind or distributed by birds and mammals have arrived, with bee, pyramidal and common spotted orchids popping up in grassy glades.
Step off the path into dense thickets and groves and it would be easy to get lost – but its mysteries excite naturalists.
“Walk 10 yards off the path and you’re into a habitat that no human eye has ever seen. Every day you spend any time here you find something you’ve never seen on a previous visit,” said Eversham.
On a recent visit, a beetle landed on his car, which turned out to be a deadwood specialist only usually spotted in ancient woodland.
“This is what classic English countryside actually ought to look like – 30 years without any pesticides has allowed nature to do what nature does,” said Eversham.
“This region has some absolute gems and then the bits in between are managed to almost zero biodiversity. This shows that it doesn’t actually take too long or much effort for nature to refind its place in the countryside.”
The landscape resembles a slightly more grownup version of the rewilded estate of Knepp, which began the process in 2000.
BCN is planning a similar management regime to Knepp, with grazing animals allowing some natural processes to be restored and help sustain the wildlife-rich mix of grassland and scrub.
Free-roaming grazing animals are important because left alone most of lowland Britain quickly becomes secondary woodland, which is deeply shaded and has fewer species than a mix of grassland and scrubland or truly ancient woodland.
Naturally regenerating scrubland is also attracting more interest because the latest studies of the carbon sequestration suggest it might sequester as much or possibly more carbon than planting trees.
The heavy clay soils at Strawberry Hill never produced high-yielding crops but Graham White remembers his father being a passionate champion for farmers receiving a fair price for their wheat. He recalls sowing wheat on fields that are now dense scrub.
“It wasn’t a plaything, it was almost like a factory,” he said of the land during their conventional farming days, when the stubble would be burnt off at the end of each harvest.
“This was mud in the winter and corn in the spring. There’s still a point of view, why isn’t this arable land? I’ve had comments: ‘This is just a load of rubbish,’” he said, pointing at the regenerating scrub, “but the Wildlife Trusts have a different viewpoint.
“We were fortunate that [an organisation such as] the Wildlife Trusts came along. My father loved wildlife. He loved his owls. I think he would have been happy.”
BCN wants to use the farm as a hub for outdoor education. Beavers in fenced enclosures – as current regulations require – could be introduced on to the little stream to rewet and bring back life in the valley bottom.
The stream is dry this month despite a record-breaking wet winter. Storing more water on the land could also alleviate flooding that affects a village downstream.
According to Graham White, beavers would meet with his father’s approval. “He would have loved to have flooded the low-lying fields [beside the stream]. It is common sense. This is low land. If it wants to flood, let it flood.”
White is also alive to the unintended consequences of big political decisions. “If the Thatcher government hadn’t brought in that set-aside policy, would this have happened?”
A handful of other farms that were put into whole-farm set-aside schemes were returned to conventional agriculture when government funding ceased.
Eversham says BCN must raise the money to ensure the whole site is protected.
“We’ve seen from other farms in a similar scheme that they can be obliterated and vanish overnight,” he said. “We can’t let that happen to Strawberry Hill. It’s too precious. There’s nowhere like it. Now is our one chance to save it for ever.”
