Studfold: Meet the family behind an enchanting fairy adventure trail in the heart of Nidderdale

Studfold has been run by the Walker family for 16 generations - that’s more than 400 years that they’ve been custodians of the land.

“There’s always been a bit of enterprise in past generations,” Anne says, “But jolly hard work as well.”

It was in 1959 that real diversification began. “An angler turned up and asked my granddad if he could put his caravan in the corner of one of the farm fields because he wanted to do some fishing in the beck,” Ian explains.

“And my granddad said ‘that’s fine, no problem. Just give me a couple of quid.’. And then somebody else saw the caravan and said ‘Well, we’d like to come and put ours there as well’.”

Within a year, Studfold cattle and sheep had to start getting used to families arriving with tents and caravans - and Gladys also began a farmhouse cafe, attracting visits from Yorkshire Dales coach trips. Today, a 60-strong static caravan site, and a campsite, glamping and touring park, make up around two thirds of the Studfold business.

The remainder is the adventure trail, opening today for the first time this season. A labour of love for Anne in particular, the family attraction has been designed with enquiring little minds at its heart.

There are clues to unravel, fairy houses and sensory boxes to discover and on-site go-karts, den building and a play park. The family are also working on adding a nine-hole mini-golf game, which they hope to open in the summer.

For sister and brother Anne and Ian, the trail is a way to share the outdoor fun that characterised their childhood, but it’s also designed to foster an appreciation of the landscape, and its nature and wildlife.

“The way we work is by capturing children at a very young age, preschool and primary, and making them excited about coming,” says 62-year-old Anne. “But there’s an underlying theme which is very important to us that children start to appreciate what is around them and their environments.

“We’ve both been school teachers. We’ve both had young kids. So it’s kind of putting it all together and trying to get children to understand the love that we have for this part of Nidderdale.”

“We feel very much that we’re custodians of what we’ve got and that we’re looking after it for the next generation,” adds 64-year-old Ian. “The experience we get from Studfold, we want to share with other people and we’re fostering a love of the countryside that hopefully, once it’s there within the children that come, will develop throughout their adult lives.”

Anne and Ian moved to the farm with their parents - Freda and Stanley Walker - when their grandfather retired from farming in 1974.

They’d spent their early years close to Bristol and Bath, where their mum and dad were working in education. Even when running Studfold, Freda and Stanley continued as school teachers - and Ian and Anne both followed in their footsteps. He worked for 30 years as a PE and maths teacher, whilst she spent a similar amount of time teaching food technology.

They took over the running of Studfold from their parents. “As children (before we moved), we would come up every single school holiday,” Ian remembers. “And we’d be getting stuck in with hay baling and milking the cows…it was always our second home up here and we loved it. We’d set off on the first day of the school holidays and go back on the last day..We were always destined to come back here.”

Their dad passed away quite suddenly in 2004, when Ian and Anne were both still teachers.

“What we realised at that point was that he took away with him so much knowledge,” Ian says. “He’d been born in this area. He’d grown up in this area. He knew a lot about the history of the farm, how it worked. It was at that point really that we decided, Anne and I, that we were going to look into finding out more about the farm.”

Inspired by Studfold’s history and its connection to the heritage of the Yorkshire Dales, with lead mines, roundhouses and even a Nidderdale marble quarry on site, the pair initially came up with an idea to create a heritage trail.

“Somebody had told dad you should open Studfold up because it’s got so much on it,” Anne says.

Around the same time, they were approached by a local nature writer about getting a group together to explore the flora, fauna and wildlife on the farm site.

Anne and Ian accepted the proposal and for nearly three years, the Studfold Community Nature Project used lottery funding to document the species that call Studfold their home.

Ian and Anne used the details to create a nature trail with information boards around the farmland.

“But it didn’t really fire the imagination of the public,” Ian says. “We were getting a few families coming around, but nothing like what we were hoping for.”

And so Anne drew from the pair’s creative background (their mum’s father was a Dales landscape painter and her brother a celebrated wildlife artist) and started turning bird boxes into miniature fairy houses to place along the trail.

She devised stories about each one of them, sharing tales of how the fairies cared for Studfold and its wealth of nature.

“All of a sudden we started getting people coming through and we gave people wings to wear and pixie hats as they went along,” Anne says. “This was just in one summer and suddenly we got people saying I’ve come for the fairy trail.”

Today, it is an elaborate trail, featuring over 30 substantial fairy houses, designed by Anne and intricately crafted by a company in Wales.

The power of social media has helped to draw in visitors and the Covid-19 pandemic also led to an unexpected boost.

“I think the trail just took off in that period because people were looking for things online that they could physically come to,” Anne says. “And so it’s a horrible thing to say but Covid did us good because people that hadn’t found us before then did. They were fed up of being inside and were looking for (outdoor) places to go.”

The trail re-opens today for its 2025 season, after a winter of hard work and planning that has seen Anne lovingly painting the houses ready for a new year of visitors.

The first event for Studfold, which is located near Pateley Bridge and Masham, is its Easter egg and fairy hunt on the adventure trail, running until April 22.

Its summertime fairy adventure then takes place from May 3 until September 20, with a new teddy bear’s picnic addition running this year from May 24 to June 1 and again on June 7, 8, 14 and 15.

On August bank holiday Sunday, Studfold will also host its annual charity duck race, starting at 1pm from the Nidderdale Way Cafe, an on-site venture run by another local family, that can provide picnic baskets for people on the adventure trail.

The trail has now been running for 16 years and has peaked in popularity, Anne says. Their passion for learning and education has helped Anne and Ian to capture young imaginations, whilst teaching children about the wonder of nature and the great outdoors and the responsibility to care for the countryside and natural environments.

Now many schools and nurseries arrange trips for pupils to visit Studfold, and Anne and Ian have secured funding to enable more to take part.

“To start with, it was jolly hard work,” Anne reflects. “Ian used to say to me Anne you spend far too much time on that trail for what it brings back. We’ve had to build what it’s become very gradually because we’re not a national trust, we’re a family run business and you can only do so much with the money you have…I think it’s now become something that we’re very very proud of.”

Continuing the family theme for learning and love of the land, Anne’s children, Heather and Matthew, are now both involved with land management and rural enterprise.

Heather is also a shepherdess, with a herd of Dalesbred sheep and is working to develop a brand for Studfold produce, so the family can sell their lamb.

Matthew, meanwhile, lives on site and is largely involved in business succession planning and considering how the farm will continue to diversify and move forward.

“We all are trying to find ways of bringing in other income but doing what everybody really loves which is being here,” Anne says.

The farm, Ian says, is “worth quite a lot of money but we don’t make a massive profit”. He’s concerned about plans from April 2026 for farmers to pay an effective rate of 20 per cent inheritance tax on assets over £1 million.

Previously, they were exempt from this tax to allow family farms to be passed down through the generations and farmers have claimed that the measures will force them to sell off land to pay inheritance bills.

Both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have said the change is important for helping to fill an apparent £22bn black hole in the public finances.

“The almost 500 years of our family being on the same farm, there’s a potential that could all be taken away because we can’t afford to pay inheritance tax,” Ian says.

“You very much feel as though you’re a custodian. You’re looking after the place,” Anne adds. “If Ian and I sold up, we’d be very wealthy. But you don’t do that. You’re looking after it for the next lot coming along. You just don’t do it. And why would we? We’re the 16th generation. And hopefully there’ll be a lot more generations to come when we’ve gone.”

“We’re not massively profit driven,” she continues. “We just want people to have a lovely experience. We obviously want to make a living. But we’re very proud of what we have. We’ve developed it as we feel is appropriate. And it’s there now ready for the next generation.”

For tickets, visit www.studfold.com