DERELICT LAND

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXI, Issue 16, 27 February 1940, Page 4

DERELICT LAND

SUCCESSFUL RECLAMATION

WORK

"MAD" FARMER NOW PUBLIC

BENEFACTOR

(From The Guardian's London

Correspondent)

LONDON, January 20

Dubbed mad two years ago because he took over hundreds of acres of derelict land at Stoke-by-Clare, Sudbury, Suffolk, Mr W. E. Borrill, a well-known Yorkshire farmer is now being hailed as a

public benefactor. Already he has brought 700 once-barren acres into food production at a time when Britain needs every acre of foodproducing land it can obtain.

Like most pioneers he has suffered by his enterprise, for had he waited a little longer he would have received £1,400 as a contribution from the Government under the £2 per acre ploughing subsidy. Mr Burrill uses powerful tractors a combine harvester that threshes the coi*n as it is cut, a plant for drying the grain artificially and a few "home-made" implements, such as a converted lorry with spudded wheels that is equally at home on a tarmac road or in a ploughed field, and and old motor-car whose powerful headlights are useful for harrowing at 'night after seeddrilling.

Wells have been bored to water the stock in the grass fields, moledraining undertaken, farm roads laid out, cottages and farm buildings rebuilt. Last year this reclaimed land averaged seven sacks of wheat to the acre and 10 to 14 sacks of barley.