Britain’s Royal Farms Now Pay Their Way

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 10

Britain’s Royal Farms Now Pay Their Way

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

LONDON

Britain’s Royal Family, who in recent years have ruled that the farms attached to their various homes must pay their way, have now added mushrooms to the Royal crops. Farms attached to the Royal homes have been in operation for mere than 100 years, but the concept that they must be run for profit rather than prestige is a modern one.

Traditionally, for many years, British farmers have looked to the Sovereign to be “The first farmer in the land” and to produce prize crops and prize beasts. But there has been a changing emphasis since the Queen and her husband, have taken an interest in the royal estates. The Queen’s Press Secretary confirmed in answer to an inquiry that mushrooms are now being grown in the grounds of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, though not on a large scale—“just part of the general set-up.” The spokesman added that the Royal mushrooms are not packed in a special container but in “just the usual punnets.” Nor are they maiked in any way to indicate their origin. They are sold on the local market alongside other crops.

Sandringham, in Norfolk, where some of the most famous pedigree livestock is produced, became a Royal home in 1861 when King Edward VIII, then Prince of Wales, bought about 10,000 acres in this northwest corner of Norfolk as a country home for £220,000.

The estate was bought as much for its shooting as anything else, but nowadays, the two home farms there are clearly costed not only by the agent. Captain W. A. Fellowes, but by experts from Cambridge University as well.

The most modern methods are used, and the Queen’s Red Poll cattle have been regular prize winners at the Royal Show at nearby Norwick. The two Sandringham farms run to 1000 acres and 1300 acres, much of it poor land reclaimed from the sea. Yet the cattle, pigs, crops, and fruit produced there are among the nation’s best.

Black currants grown on the Sandringham farms sell for £2OO a ton to fruit canners, and a £lO,OOO packing and grading station deals with the apples from 57 acres. The varieties include Cox’s Orange, Worcester Pearmain, and Laxton’s Fortune. The orchards were started by King George VI. The Windsor Royal farms are also esteemed in the farming world as combining the most modern methods with a rich and ancient background. The Jersey herd lives in a shed designed by Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, in 1852. But inside it are the latest milking machines. The Queen Victoria dairy has been carefully preserved as an example of such buildings in the 19th century. On the tiled walls, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and

their nine children are depicted. Beneath them, Crown Derby setting pans stand on marble tables, and below them water troughs for cooling, supplied by a fountain which played at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Windsor Royal farms total 650 acres, and the cattle, every one de-horned, are described as “commercial pedigree,” which means that they are well bred but fed for production in line with the pay-your-way farm policy. More than 1000 laying pullets are kept on the deep litter system, and young chicks are reared in the old aviary where Queen Victoria housed rare birds from her Empire. Livestock, dairy cattle, and poultry are supplemented by a herd of Large White Pigs. Wheat, barley, milk and eggs are the main items for sale from Windsor. The once-famous Devon herd has gone, but one is kept on the Duchy farms in Cornwall, now nominally belonging to the 11-year-old Prince of Wales who is also Duke of Cornwall.

The smallest of the Royal farms is in Scotland, at the Queen’s home at Balmoral, said to be her favourite- There, a 70 acre farm, Invergelder, is set amid the beauties of Upper Deeside in Aberdeenshire, bought in 1852. A small attested herd of Ayrshire cattle kept at Balmoral supplies milk to the castle and surrounding community. But Sandringham remains the centre of interest from the farming point of view, and the “make-it-pay” policy led to a dispute with a frozen foods firm some months ago, in which the stand taken by the Royal farm manager, Mr Roger Mutimer, was welcomed by smaller farmers in the area. The frozen food firm had been buying peas from 80 acres at Sandringham on a price per acre basis. But the new contract for this year’s crop stipulated payment by weight at £45 a ton. Mr Mutimer would not accept this price, and asked the food firm to take away a £3OOO viner for shelling peas on the farm. Although local farmers welcomed this stand. East Coast holiday-makers were not so pleased when the Duke of Edinburgh ordered a cut in the Royal flower display so that more vegetables could be grown. After paying coach fares to see the Sandringham flower gardens, they complained at seeing 16 acres of vegetables where there used to be flowers.