Country estate by the sea is taking hundreds of years of tradition into a farming fit for the future approach

However, under the leadership of the current management team & Estate Director, Robert Childerhouse, great strides have been taken in the last six years.

They include increasing farmland in the estate’s control for arable farming; with a key focus on conservation and stewardship and the creation of environmental habitats that are of size equivalent to 160 Premier League Football pitches.

Mr Childerhouse, who relocated his family from Norfolk to take the Estate management job, said: “One of the attractions to coming was that the estate offered at least 10 years of personal challenge. The Estate had not taken up the opportunities to further develop its farming activities or diversified its leisure potential - it needed a fresh pair of eyes.

"Nothing happens quickly in the countryside and agriculture and it takes a long time for change to follow through. But we are getting there.”

In agreement with the owner, Lord Normanby, who takes an extremely close interest in the Estate, a programme was put together that would see the estate enhance its offering and protect its future in farming.

Mr Childerhouse said: “Mulgrave is very traditional, it had not really diversified away from those traditional sources of income that had supported it for many decades and the government had been encouraging farmers and landowners for a while to identify new income opportunities.

“We have a big focus on the environment, woodland creation and countryside stewardship – of course good productive agricultural land is kept for food production. Farming and wildlife can co-exist and it does here on the Estate.”

Ultimately Mulgrave is a landed estate and this autumn the Estate’s Home Farm enters the Sustainable Farming Incentive to monitor and improve the soil health and productive quality of over 300 fields over a three year period.

The estate now farms 2,500 acres of land, growing wheat, barley, oats and rapeseed in rotation as well as grassland. It generates 3,000 tonnes of food produce each year and recently as part of its strategy to ensure a sustainable farming future, the Estate managed to secure planning permission from the North York Moors National Park to build a grain store to help ensure grain can be kept dry and stored for longer.

The Estate entered a Countryside Stewardship, a scheme managed by Natural England, in 2018 and has created wildlife areas and habitats that are equal to 160 Premier League football pitches. They are alive with birdlife, butterflies, bees and other wildlife and provide pollen, nectar and a winter food source. Working with the National Park and Anglo American, the Estate has also created a number of wetland habitats, which provide a home to newts, frogs, toads and pondlife insects. Work on two more ponds is set to start next month.

“It will self-populate”, explains the Estate Director. “You build it and they will come. Within a year it will be amazing and alive with pondlife.”

Mulgrave also puts wide grass margins around larger arable fields to provide a natural corridor between food production and natural features such as hedges and water courses. They also reduce soil run-off and helps prevent water pollution.

Meanwhile, around and about on farm buildings and on in field trees, hundreds of bat and bird boxes have been installed, rainwater harvesting is also a major aspect of the estates farming policy, with over 300,000 litres of capacity now installed with support from the National Park.

The Estate has also put 300 acres of its moorland into restoration, which had been left to its own devices for many years. In order to undo that re-wilding and allow the heather to naturally restore, a team of Exmoor Ponies have been drafted in to graze the grasses and scrub.

The ponies have proved popular with the locals in Lythe and Sandsend who volunteer to check up on them daily.