4. Slope

It isn’t just individuals and companies, bent on the purchase of land for profit, that are happy to see viable sites lay unused and derelict.

Hunsbury Hill Farm comprises of the remaining listed buildings owned by Northamptonshire ACRE. They’re a charitable organisation created to aid rural communities and were lucky to be gifted the farm buildings in Northampton on Hunsrbury Hill.
It's a lovely little place.  Many of the attractive farm buildings are still unused – lack of funds mean the listed buildings are hard to adapt. They do hire out the main buildings for weddings etc. though, and it has a fantastic view from the car park as you enter.


As part of the site they also own a large area of woodland, and around an acre of open ground sloping towards the A45. From their own website we knew neither the woodland nor this open land had been maintained recently, and were heavily overgrown. They had received a lottery grant to look into what work might be carried out to use this land, and decided, rather obviously, a path could be built around the buildings.
No work had been carried out on this plan since then.

The place was obviously not of any use to the urban farm plans (far too small, an inconvenient entrance, and for the use of someone else), but we had been looking for a single convenient site to temporarily store our roadshow equipment together.
With limited funds, this hasn’t been easy, and so Hunsbury Hill Farm came onto our radar.

We approached them with an initial offer of mutual aid, emphasising that we hadn’t seen the site so couldn't go into details.

We suggested we would clear the open area of brambles/weeds, sow it with grass seed, and return it to the grazing standard that had been there when it was a farm. We would also create that path they had planned, and repair the boundary fences, gates and hedgerows. This would take two years, during which time we would store our trailer and equipment in the paddock, keep 2/3 goats to eat the debris we were cutting back and use as part of our roadshow, and train our volunteers in necessary skills.

We did not want to bring visitors to the site, but were willing to create an area for their visitors to see the goats if they wanted. There was also the possibility that if the grass was adequate that we would bring in a maximum of three sheep to graze the grass, but this seemed unlikely in the time-frame.
Any animals kept there would be our responsibility, we and our volunteers would be insured at our expense.

We made clear we had no intention of staying beyond two years as we have bigger plans to work on.  It would be more a maintenance agreement than lease.

In total we estimate that our time, effort, and supplies would amount to over a thousand pounds of work during the two years, and they would be left with a paddock for events or to hire out once we left.


We were invited to see the land by the site-management team who seemed keen on the idea - if perhaps a little surprised the state of the land didn't put us off. They were very helpful, going beyond what we intended, and suggesting we use one of the unused out-buildings for storage.

We had a good look at the land to see what was actually possible. Of note was the elder growing from their building that needed to be removed before it brought a wall down, a hedgerow that had been removed by them recently, but would have been legally protected and should be replaced, and the outflow (that the last farmer of the land had told us emerged from under the building) was missing. It may have been blocked and might explain the overflowing duck pond - again this could damage their buildings.
The boundary fence was in need of some repair, and was in fact a danger to the deer we could see evidence of near the woodland, but the overgrown nature of the bulk of the site wouldn’t be a problem – we’d dealt with far worse.

It seemed to us the plans held water - although we could only make suggestions as to what work we could carry out, as they would need to be clear what they would allow or wanted to be left with.

The work would certainly have to begin quickly as the grass would need to be sown a few months before winter, this was July and we were told that their committee were meeting in a few days.  Another proposal would have to be made before then or we would have to wait until September for a decision.
This was a little daunting as it was still very much open ended, but we decided to keep it simple, giving them bullet points of what we had already told them, in the hope detailed decisions might be delegated to the site manager.

The day after their meeting we received the decision of their committee.

No.

They couldn’t allow us to use the site for 'operational, practical, resourcing and technical issues'.

We have no idea what they could be, and at first thought about pursuing it, but on reflection there seems little point. If they were inclined to change their mind they would surely have asked questions to clarify their concerns.

The area we would work was away from all their current plans and operation, we wouldn't have needed to enter their visitor area at all. The amount of work they would receive made this deal a win-win for them it seemed, and they certainly would have benefited long term.


As with all these decisions over land, the owners have a total right to allow their land to be derelict and unused, even land they're lucky to have been gifted. Land they receive grants to look into using.

We have recently been told that they are instrumental in employing an officer that travels the county helping community groups in villages make use of derelict spaces - negotiating with the owners.


We wish the management team we met the best of luck.  And we hope the Northants ACRE committee don't claim expenses for attending meetings - their charity clearly needs money for front-line projects.

[Our directors are not paid, nor will ever be paid.  If they really wanted expenses for something, the members would have to agree to it.]