In West Sussex, around a Gothic Revival castle designed by John Nash, Charlie Burrell stopped farming his family’s 1,400 loss-making hectares in 2000. Longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, pigs and deer now roam free: Knepp is the first major rewilding project in lowland England.
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By 2010 the estate held 1% of the UK’s breeding nightingales; it now has the country’s largest colony of purple emperor butterflies and 13 of the 17 bat species that breed in Britain. In 2020, white storks raised the first chicks born in the wild in England for six centuries.
Knepp hosts teams for the day, up to 36 people, in The Gathering, a former grain store: an introduction to the project, a guided walking safari and an organic lunch. The estate does not house groups; its cabins are booked separately and the team suggests places nearby. Trains run from London Victoria to Horsham in 55 minutes, then a 15-minute taxi.
Photo credits : Antiquary (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) ; Matt Ellery (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) ; PeterEastern (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Richard Nevell (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Steer Photographic (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
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