Missing out on the jewel of England's rewilding crown

Or how I messed up at Knepp

Six years ago I was profiled in the trade rag ‘Marketing Week’.

The headline wasn’t exactly flattering.

The journalist had picked over the bones of my CV and discerned a pattern.

That my timing had been off at nearly every place I had worked.

That definitely proved to be true of my first sallying-forth into the world of re-wilding.

And that was before I was even aware it was a thing.

Let’s rewind the clock back to 2009.

I had successfully launched Feather Down Farm Days, a concept I had brought over from the Netherlands a few years earlier. Feather Down introduced ‘glamping’ (aka glamorous camping) to the chattering classes in the UK.

Feather Down’s take on a canvas version of a 19th century farmhouse struck a chord in the ‘shabby chic’ vibe of the early 21st century.

After a successful launch, the backers now wanted a spin off, the proverbial second album, based in the grounds of country houses rather than on farms. So I tramped round the UK looking for landowners keen to diversify their estates.

On my hit-list was the Knepp estate in Sussex. It looked like it would tick all sorts of boxes - close to London, a great-looking country house and oodles of lovely landscape.

The story of Knepp has since been documented in two fine books written by Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, the chatelains of Knepp.

The first was a bestseller that came out in 2019 telling the story of how they let their 1,400 hectares of unproductive farmland return to a state of nature.

The second book came out more recently as a ‘how-to’ guide to tackling a re-wilding project.

Oh, and there was also a docu-drama in 2024 which was also rather good.

However, back in 2009, the word ‘rewilding’ meant little to the proverbial ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, myself included.

Charlie greeted me warmly at the gates of Knepp Castle that November afternoon. He was curious to find out more about the business of ‘glamping’ and I was there to see if he would let me site my tents in his backyard.

I jumped into a Land Rover with him and his estate manager and we drove for 30 minutes across waterlogged fields until we got to somewhere called ‘the Southern Block’.

As politely as only an Englishman can, I told him this was all very lovely (it was peeing with rain. It truly wasn’t lovely) but our glamping guests would want to be in view of the family ‘pile’, their home.

I had a wander and found the perfect spot, or so I thought.

It was the far side of a beautifully landscaped lake with a view of their early 19th century John Nash designed family home.

But that’s where we parted company.

Charlie was adamant that the tents should be situated in the heart of the land in the ‘Southern Block’. He said it would become a paradise for nature.

In my eyes it looked like a soggy wasteland that November afternoon and not terribly saleable to middle class families driving down from London. My solution compromised their privacy. So that was that.

15 years later, armed with a new-found passion for re-wilding and a modicum of knowledge about the subject, I returned to Knepp.

I have never been to the Serengeti or even a safari park for that matter but that spring day I realised I might not have to.

Here was an English version on my doorstep. I was in the midst of a glorious eco-system pulsing with life.

There were a series of platforms around the estate that you could clamber up onto.

From one I saw my first ever white stork, calmly minding its own business by the side of a pond.

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And from the next I was subjected to a sensory overload of birdsong.

The call of cuckoos to the left, turtle doves to the right and nightingales everywhere.

‘By Jove, I think they’ve pulled it off’, I whispered to myself.

All three of those species are becoming increasingly rare across the UK but they were all there and very much in earshot.

It’s sobering to think that less than a hundred years ago such a cacophony would have been normal in spring-time in our countryside.

Now we have to get ourselves to a handful of places in the UK to witness such a glorious symphony from nature.

And the glamping?

Five years after our meeting, Charlie had gone and set it up for himself. In the ‘Southern Block’ that I had turned my nose up on.

And it was a raging success.

Their shepherd’s huts, bell tents, yurts and tree houses are booked out months in advance during peak season.

And since 2024 there is an excellent cafe and restaurant, along with an art gallery and shop selling ‘rewilded meat’ from the estate.

I returned to what I had thought was the perfect spot for my concept 15 years earlier. The ‘bothy’ that I had earmarked for an honesty shop for the happy campers was now tumbling down. As I approached, a roe deer stepped out from the shadows.

At that moment, rather than kicking myself for what could have been one of the worst business decisions of my life, I felt quietly moved that wildlife had taken the bothy over as its home, rather than humans.

I went back to London a chastened but happy man.

A couple of months later Charlie Burrell and I caught up with each other in London. We were both marching under the banner of ‘Rewilding Britain’ at the Restore Nature Now demonstration.

We exchanged a few words and a wry smile at how things had worked out. I also met Isabella for the first time.

They are truly the king and queen of rewilding in England.

It was they who were on the cusp of the next big thing, not me.

They had the patience and guts to bet the farm (literally) on a concept that was unknown and unproven in Britain.

I for one am truly grateful that they turned me down and that their gamble paid off.