Cow Hall farm is a very unusual and special place; it was bypassed by most of 20th century farm intensification. An upland farm in Shropshire’s Clun Forest it retains all the original fields, hedges, buildings and streams and is an important part of the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty/National Landscape. The herd of Hereford cattle (designated a rare breed) was established in the 1930s .We are considering buying back some of the recently sold, original flock of Clun sheep. There has never been use of artificial fertiliser, herbicides or pesticides. Farmed by the same family for six generations all using similar management, it is a unique wildlife and agricultural ecosystem.

 

The farmyard comprises 18th. and 19th. C timber framed and stone walled buildings for cattle and hay with stone steps to a corn store. Part cobbled yard. Unusual earth bank pond, for meadow water management or power.

 

Rising steeply from the ancient hay meadows on the Clun riverbank to the wind-swept hill tops at 1,400 feet the land is mainly permanent pasture, but there has always been some arable land, growing cereals used for animal feed, and swedes or potatoes. The lower fields were cut out of the wild wood by the first farmers and the site of an Iron-age farmstead suggests that the land may have been farmed for 2,500 years. Before that stone age flint nappers used what is now the garden to nap flint cores brought along the Clun-Clee Ridgeway on the Southern edge of the farm from the chalk downs of Wiltshire. More recently the hill was open moorland, scrub and woodland, enclosed with the characteristic straight hawthorn hedges by the mid to late 19th Century. There are 25 fields averaging 6 acres, nearly all surrounded by laid, coppiced or large growth hedges.

 

Management Plan

 

Overall aim: to maintain the Cow Hall ecosystem by integrating wildlife conservation with the farming.

 

Cow Hall is unique in terms of its very high biodiversity, historic layout and buildings and indigenous livestock. This is a consequence of very long-term, stable management of a mixed farming system, with no agrochemicals or artificial inputs at any time.

 

We have ambitious long-term plans for the farm which focus on maintaining the existing features, enhancing wildlife habitats, monitoring species, protecting water quality and flow and engaging the wider public in the food produced and experience of the farm.

 

Priority wildlife species at Cow Hall

 

Particularly those that are already present and locally at risk. Also those that have been lost in the recent past:

 

• Meadow pasture species; 140 plants, fungi and soil.   

• Mountain Pansy. Present on nearby road verge

• Black Poplar. Locally important

• Ash. Alternative needed as die back is removing many of the local trees

• Lapwing now extinct and curlew. Curlew ongoing decline and local conservation programme. Two chicks hatched in 2025.

• Snipe, Woodcock, Kingfisher, Tree Creeper

• Flycatcher. Present and nest box project on farm

• Barn and Tawny owl. Present on the farm.

• Little owl and nightjar, not seen since 2000

• Goshawk, sparrowhawk, hobby

• Crayfish. Locally present

• Pearl Mussels. Locally present - rare

• Invertebrates inc. butterflies such as Brimstone and Marsh Violet, food plant for the Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary butterfly

• Otter. Locally present

• Pine Martin. Locally present – very rare

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