If you’ve read part one and part two of our history of Warren Farm, you’ll know that our land and much of the surrounding area used to be hunting grounds, prized for their deer and wild boar. It wasn’t until the Enclosures Acts of 1790 through to the 1820s that boundaries were drawn up across these hills and the footprint of our farm was set out.
The original field layouts were dry stone walls, some of which remain today. Meanwhile, the series of lime kilns you see across the area played a key role in helping people farm the land. The Mendips sit on top of limestone, which is porous and alkaline, while the soil above it is acidic. Acidic plants have their place, but not if you want to produce food, so to cultivate crops, you have to take the lime out from the rocks under the soil and put it back in the soil to make it more alkaline and help the plants grow.
For this reason, quarries and lime kilns used to be a common sight in the area, and we have the remains of one of them on our land today.
The original farm layout from the 1800s included stone buildings laid out in a forecourt-type fashion. One barn was used to store grains and hay, and there was a smaller shed for the storage of goods. There was also a large stable block where the horses were kept. It was all horsepower in those days, so the stables were the equivalent of today’s machinery sheds.
The farm came into James’ family in 1945 when his grandfather, Teddy Small, took it on.
James’ dad was a young boy at the time. Up until then, he had grown up on a farm about a mile and a half away. A lot of the land nearby was used for army camps, and during the war, they served as mapping centres and places to muster forces ready for key military operations.
Americans used to bring tanks, jeeps, trucks, and half-tracks in through the UK’s Western ports, and they would mass at the camps before disappearing overnight, heading over to the East Coast, some in preparation for D-Day.
James’ dad recalled how, as a four or five-year-old, he would go to the camp next door, which was just over the field, with his seven-year-old sister, carrying eggs and produce from the farm to trade with the soldiers.
In return, they would receive tins of spam and other exotic-seeming goods from the soldiers. Sometimes the children would watch the trucks gearing up to leave. By the next day, they would be gone, but another lot would soon replace them.
James’ dad also remembered watching planes massing, with gliders on the back, ready to take the parachutists over for the D-Day invasions. One of the planes tragically crashed on the farm.
It was not the only plane to come down here during the war: in around 1941 or 1942, a Henckel 111 (a German bomber) was shot down over Yeovil. The crew were captured, and we still have a photograph of the plane sitting near the lane to the farm. Military activity continued in the area after the war, and a cadet camp still exists at Yoxter.
Teddy Small was part of a large farming family. His father, another James Edward Small, had about 13 farms in the area. But Teddy, the youngest child, had a bit of a fallout with his father, and went his own way. He didn’t buy Warren Farm immediately; he rented it until the early 1950s, when he was able to buy it.
The farm was about 355 acres in size at that time. It was a mixed farm, much like what we would now call a regenerative farm. It had milking cows, beef cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens, plus root crops and cereals—so Teddy did a little bit of everything, which is what a lot of farms did back then.
As time went on, government policy forced the farm to specialise. They lost their licence from the Milk Marketing Board in the late 1950s, after which Teddy started to focus more on beef and sheep, and from 1965, when the boys (James’s uncle and father) took over, the livestock element decreased and they focused more on arable, as well as working off the farm too. This meant driving lorries, shearing – all sorts of things, just to try and make ends meet.
The boys were able to acquire another 212-odd acres over the years, so we now own about 570 acres, and on top of that we graze, rent and manage another about 700 or so acres.
About 25 years ago, the current James Edward Small became a partner with his mother, father, uncle and aunt. His aunt, mother and father have since passed away, and the farm is now a family partnership run by James, his wife Kate, and James’ uncle John.
These days, the farm has a mix of traditional and modern farm buildings. The oldest, original buildings, including the barn and stable block, are now pretty much redundant for modern farming use, and we have added larger buildings which, among other things, house the machinery that has long since replaced horsepower. Very little harvesting is done by hand in modern farming, so you need bigger spaces to house and move the equipment.
Some areas of rough farmland, left over from the mining period, have been levelled by the Small family and made into useable agricultural fields. They’re much larger than average – typically about 30 acres, but we’re now looking at reducing those field sizes down a bit for grazing management. We’ve planted hundreds of thousands of trees on the farm since we’ve been here – nearly 7000 in the past two years alone. Much has changed since the days when Teddy Small took Warren Farm on, but our love for this beautiful land remains the same. If you come and stay with us, you’ll see why.
Want to know more?
Our farm history tours, which run on peak times such as bank holidays and school holidays, bring you up close to the history of the land we farm. James will take you by tractor and trailer to see Roman remains, a mysterious cave, and much more, journeying from the area’s prehistory right up to the present day.
Hopefully you have enjoyed this article about the History of Warren Farm part three. You can read part one and part two here.