The Cholderton Estate

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The Cholderton Estate

A family-owned organic Estate near Stonehenge. Boutique hot-tub hideaways set within our 2500 acres, plus events and retreats held throughout the year.

We also host an exclusive number of weddings annually at our venue

07/01/2025

A cold snap with some beautiful winter sunshine left our walled garden and arboretum made January look very lovely today.

We have some availability in our accommodation options this month, so if an escape to a quiet rural corner is much needed take a look! As well as exploring the estate and local area, you could talk a walk down to the lambing sheds and see our very new lambs, before perhaps finishing the day in your wood fired hot tub. Bliss!

03/01/2025

WINTER FROST | On the coldest night, we had some very lovely new arrivals - one set of twin lambs and three singles. It is the start of a busy few months for us and the lambing sheds will be filling up quickly now.

We will again be running our popular lambing encounters over Spring half term, dates not yet open for booking (but we will let you know when they are!)

31/12/2024

A warm farewell to 2024! A year of new lambs to add to our rare breed Hampshire Down flock, new foals to continue the endangered lineage of the Cleveland Bay and plenty of spotting of unexpected butterflies (most recently the Olive Tree pearl – take a look at our blog!). We have seen our courtyard at Kingsettle Stud transformed to host so many beautiful weddings and our accommodation has brought lots of lovely visitors to our doorstep who have loved immersing themselves in the Estate.

Most recently, Flock Flowers, With Wild Abandon brought the Christmas magic to our Victorian stable yard and earlier in the year, the NGS open garden was a wonderful day for visitors to explore the grounds (we will be opening again in 2025). The Troubadour Stageworks brought some thespian charm to us with their performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the wildlife photography walks have captured some fantastic wildlife moments throughout the year.

All in all a great year! With huge thanks to all the Cholderton team that make all of this possible and champion the farm’s commitment to organic and sustainable farming. 2025 marks the family’s 140th year of farming at Cholderton, let’s make it a good one! We wish you the very best for the year to come.

25/12/2024

Not a white Christmas this year but a lovely frosty moment on the farm.

A very happy Christmas to all our brilliant followers. Thank you so much for your support this year and we hope you have a wonderful peaceful time this Christmas.

21/12/2024

WINTER SOLSTICE | A walk to watch the sunrise is always a good idea and this morning certainly, as the sun rose for the shortest day of the year, before our days start getting longer and lighter again.

From the highest point of the farm, we watched a fairly unexciting but blustery sunrise, startling deer and rabbits as we trudged up there in near darkness. The Red Kites were already up and swooping across the sky, while all sorts of birds joined in the dawn chorus, ‘helped’ by a guttural rook call every so often.

A happy solstice to all. Just 7 hours, 49 minutes and 42 seconds of daylight today!

17/12/2024

The winding down of the year brings a quiet restfulness across the flock. With lambing on the horizon in the early months of 2025, they will soon be moved back to the lambing sheds where the barns become a place for community amongst themselves and for the arrival of new life.

The Hampshire Down breed has been here on the farm ever since Henry ‘Inky’ Stephens chose to stock it back in 1890 and the farm (and flock!) has remained with the family since. Stephens is best known for founding Stephens Ink, but was a polymath with numerous interests including farming and was passionate about using sheep to fertilise the land in rotation with growing crops.

We continue to farm in this way today, although we no longer have 14 shepherds on hand as Stephens’ flock would have done. Now it is very much all hands on deck during lambing, so for the meantime, we are enjoying winding down the year too!

09/12/2024

What a weekend! We are all feeling very Christmassy after the Flowers, With Wild Abandon F.L.O.C.K winter fair this weekend where the Victorian stables and carriage room were filled with stall holders and where Father Christmas made himself at home. The weather was not in our favour but we so appreciate everyone who came and helped make it such a success! ⁣
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We are now hunkering down for Christmas and have some last minute availability for this weekend (in our Bustard shepherds hut) and are also offering 20% off stays until the 23rd December. Use the code LASTMINUTE for bookings. ⁣
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These wonderful photos are taken by Kate Cullen who magically captured the light falling across the field outside Bustard Hut. It is a really special corner of the farm and a beautiful place to relax (in the wood fired hot tub perhaps!) and look out over the farm.

29/11/2024

✨Just ONE week to go until .l.o.c.k__ takes over the Victorian courtyard at ✨ Get ready for a magical experience filled with festive charm 🎄

Father Christmas is making a special appearance (last chance to grab your grotto tickets, they’re almost gone! 🎅) and there will be carefully curated stalls brimming with very special offerings.

Shop beautiful block printed waistcoats from , gorgeous kilim slippers from , stunning calligraphy from , delicate watercolour illustrations from , wonderful recipe and poetry books from and unique frames from .

There will be sustainable moss based wreath kits available to collect (order on .l.o.c.k__ website please!) and some very lovely bay wreaths too.

Cholderton Estate artist in residence Sally Newton will also be popping up with her paintings and offering 15 minute sketches of your dogs (well behaved and on leads please!)

We are SO excited to see the courtyard come to life next week. Hope you can make it! ✨

To book Father Christmas and wreath kits, head to .l.o.c.k__ website. Message for dog sketching availability.

19/11/2024

A brief break in the clouds for sunshine this week and our cows were very pleased about it!

We have Hereford and a Hereford Angus mix here on the farm. We made the tough decision to phase out our two dairies but have been able to keep our herd by impregnating our dairy cows with sexed Angus semen and farming instead for meat. It has been successful, though not without its challenges along the way.

Our cows come into the barns for the coldest, wettest months and for the rest of the year are out grazing on our organic key pastures. They love to see the sunshine as much as we do!

12/11/2024

LAPWING HUT | One of three of our self catering accommodation options on the estate, Lapwing Hut is a cosy and romantic getaway for couples.

Complete with a luxurious king sized bed, en-suite bathroom, kitchenette and an outside seating area with fire pit and private log fired hot tub, it is the perfect place to get outside for the weekend.

We chose to name our huts Lapwing and Bustard after two birds which are locally renowned. We are passionate about the survival of Lapwing here on the estate, using fallow land and fences to protect young birds from predation and nearby the reintroduction of Great Bustards is a wonderful conservation success story, with these historic birds once again making an appearance across Salisbury plain following their extinction in the 19th Century.

We would love to welcome you on the estate, lots more information available by clicking on the link in our bio!

27/10/2024

CRISP MORNINGS AHEAD | A beautiful sunrise on the farm, with the ancient landmark Quarley Hill Fort on the horizon beyond this weekend.

Our newest newsletter has just gone out with the exciting news of .l.o.c.k__ ‘s Winter Market on the 6th and 7th December, complete with a visit from Father Christmas in his grotto and diy sustainable moss based wreath kits on offer.

In the newsletter, we also chatted about the first stage towards lambing; the introduction of the rare breed rams who went in with our Hampshire Downs recently. We will be running our popular Lambing Encounters again over Spring Half term, in aid of the Cholderton Estate Trust, so stay tuned for details of these.

If you missed the newsletter and would like to join the mailing list, pop to the link in bio or send us a message and we will send it on.

Have a happy Sunday!

10/10/2024

SAINFOIN | We thought we would take the opportunity of our next blog post to talk about this plant which has a very special place in the long rotation sequence that we undertake at Cholderton. According to the Victorian County History for Wiltshire Sainfoin was being grown here in 1730 and continues to be grown today across the farm.

Estate Owner Henry Edmunds reflects on the crop in our latest blog post, ‘to grow such a special crop is a privilege and an enjoyment. I anticipate the gaudy fields of pink flowers and the myriad butterflies and other invertebrates that flock to them. I enjoy watching the cows selectively grazing off the sainfoin before all else in the field. This is proof enough of its palatability. The shine on their coats demonstrates its health-giving characteristics’.

Sainfoin produces a clump of highly nutritious leaves as early as mid March which provides forage for our ewes and lambs, and quickly replenishes to allow for nectaring bees and other invertebrates to visit the crop. It certainly earns its place on the farm and the pink fields are a sight to behold too!

You can read more about Sainfoin on our latest blog post, as well as read other thoughts from Henry about wildlife and organic farming.

08/10/2024

LAST MINUTE OFFER | We have availability in our Coach House and Bustard Hut this weekend and are offering a discount with the code LASTMINUTE.

With Stonehenge and Salisbury Plain on our doorstep, as well as beautiful walks and plenty of wildlife here on the farm, there is plenty to make a lovely weekend getaway.

Booking link in bio!

22/09/2024

EQUINOX | Today is the autumn equinox, bringing the start of autumn, though honestly it is well under way here already.

This is one of our favourite times on the farm, when the hedgerows, trees and the fields start to change colour and the light begins to get magical with misty, crisper mornings and golden afternoons.

Today has brought a deluge of rain to us all, but there is plenty of life to be found across the farm, from the last of the orchard’s treasures, the dahlias bringing vibrant colour to the grey skies and sunshine after the rain casting across the fields.

Happy autumn equinox! 🍂

17/09/2024

🪨✨STADDLE STONE MYSTERY ✨🪨 | At our Estate, staddle stones are a charming feature, holding up barns with their unique mushroom-like bases. But recently, we stumbled upon something truly intriguing- this enigmatic face peering out from a weathered stone that’s long lost its barn. Could it be a guardian of old, maybe there were once four of these faces, warding off pests from the previous grain stored above? 🤔🦉Who do you think this stone might be? Do share your theories with us!

05/09/2024

THE COACH HOUSE | Aside from our two Shepherds Huts, we also welcome guests to our Grade II listed two bedroom cottage, housed within part of our Victorian stable block. It’s a lovely historic building, with some added modern day comforts – our private log fired hot tub is very popular with guests and has great views across the farm.

We are ten minutes away from Stonehenge for sightseeing and closer to home have plenty of lovely dog walks and relaxing Sunday pub lunches to choose from. If you would like to know more, head to our bio.

Scroll to the last side to see this wonderful photo from 1908 of Stud workers, in the courtyard beside the Coach House. Wouldn’t it be great to recreate it?

31/08/2024

A very fortunate spot this week as a Brown Hairstreak landed in front of our feet on a sunny afternoon.

These butterflies have undergone a significant decline in Britain and Ireland due to the management of hedgerows. Here we try to cut once in every three or four years and will then often trim just one side and not the other, to preserve the tiny white eggs of the Brown Hairstreak butterfly, which over winter on the Blackthorn here.

Mainly found in south-west Wales, Devon / Somerset and Surrey / Sussex borders, there are a couple of small colonies around the Salisbury Plain area and we are so excited whenever we spot them here.

In fact, you can find interesting butterflies all over the Estate. Marsh Fritillary, Burgundy Fritillary and Adonis Blue have all returned to the area, where they hadn’t been seen for seventy years.

If you would like to see these, it’s a good idea to grab some binoculars before midday and look up amongst the treetops where they tend to congregate. Ash, Oak and Birch trees are all good places to look out for them! Or if you would really like to immerse yourself in butterfly watching, our accommodation options are a great way to be up close with nature.

18/08/2024

BIRDING | As all good things come to those who wait, so is the case with our welcome visitors who we have been venturing out at dusk to watch.

Come 8pm when the night starts to draw in, the hares darting across the fields, the buzzards making their last calls of the day and the tawny owls beginning to wake up, the clumsy and noisy cockchafer bugs start to rise from the stubble and whizz around the skies (albeit somewhat drunkenly!).

Almost instantly, swooping speedily across the skies, a Hobby appears, followed swiftly by several more giving an acrobatic performance while skimming the fields and feasting on the bugs.

These small and swift falcons are Summer visitors, returning to Africa in the Autumn have a distinctive scythe like wingspan, moving like swifts.

They have brought us absolute joy this weekend. Do check out our accommodation options if you are interested in exploring the wildlife here, our organic farm is thriving with all sorts to discover!

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Salisbury
SP40DX

Website

http://Linktr.ee/thecholdertonestate

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WINTER FROST | On the coldest night, we had some very lovely new arrivals - one set of twin lambs and three singles. It is the start of a busy few months for us and the lambing sheds will be filling up quickly now. We will again be running our popular lambing encounters over Spring half term, dates not yet open for booking (but we will let you know when they are!)