Kingston Stroll #8: Down on the Farm - Background
This is the 8th of a 10-cache series which takes you from the heart of the village through the fields and along the farm lanes of the Swanborough area immediately to the east. The 3.5km circuit can be completed in under 2 hours allowing for necessary cache and optional short bird-watching, photographic and refreshment stops en route.
The cache, a camo-topped 35mm film pot, is hidden at the gated access to this delightful part of the trail which descends back into Kingston via a wild flower festooned narrow track between thick hedgerows and fields with some fine views of the Downs.
To Reach the Cache Location: from #7 follow the track south past the location of the GC9DWG5 Stinky Stump cache to the Swanborough lakes T-junction. Turn right (west) along The Droveway.
At the junction with the main Kingston Road, carefully cross over the road and head south to the junction with one of the two access lanes for Swanborough village. Take this lane west and then, just around the corner, pick up the grassy track heading north to the cache location.
Swanborough Farm which you skirted to reach the cache is one of 4 farms in the Iford estate, a 1,200 hectare (3,000) acre mixed farm producing mainly cereals and beef. The estate, which you will have been walking through from #6 to here, also has a range of leisure facilities and activities and has its own airstrip.
It is wholly located within the South Downs National Park and mostly occupies the area between Iford Hill to the east and the River Ouse to the west, stretching from Iford village in the south to Kingston Farm to the north-west and The Cockshut stream to the north.
The estate was founded in 1895 by Joseph Colgate Robinson (JCR), who came from a Quaker family of farmers and millers. He became a noted breeder of pedigree Dairy Shorthorn and Guernsey cattle and was a pioneer of tubercle-free milk production. He established successful retail farm-bottled milk businesses in Hove and Norbury, South London. The Dairy Shorthorn herd was the largest and best known in the country during the period from the 1920s to the 1950s and at one time held two world record milk production records for any breed.
He built up the estate gradually, purchasing farms as they became available and by WW2 owned all of Iford and Rise Farm and was renting Perching Sands Farm at Fulking and Houndean Farm at Lewes. He had also set his elder son Harris up independently at Northease Farm.
During the war, his younger son Henry (HCR) was managing the farm at Perching Sands, but on his marriage in 1944, he moved to Iford to manage the farms for JCR (who had moved to live with his family in Newick in 1922).
In the period after the war, some 50 staff were growing cereals and producing, bottling and selling milk. A pedigree bull was sold each week around the world and in the ‘dig for victory’ campaign all the land that was ploughable on the hill was ploughed up and sown with cereals.
JCR died in 1962 and HCR continued modernising the farm in an effort to improve productivity and reduce labour costs. He introduced milking parlours at all four Iford dairy herds and drained all the wet marshland, known as The Brooks [parts of which now comprise the Lewes Brooks SSSI] in order to grow cereals. He also upgraded the Dairy Shorthorn cattle into higher-yielding Red and White Friesian cattle.
His son John (JHR) joined the business in 1970 when there were 35 members of staff. The dairy herds were continually expanded until at one point 650 cows were being milked in 5 units and we had the largest herd of Red & White Friesians in the country.
HCR retired in 1987, The tenancy at Perching Sands Farm at Fulking was given up, and Houndean Farm was bought. Ben Taylor joined the staff as a student in 1997. Dairy farming became increasingly unprofitable during the latter part of the century and the final herd was sold in 2003. Swanborough Farm was bought in 2014.
