Chawton House Library's estate includes extensive parkland, which is managed through a mixed grazing regime, including sheep, cattle and horses. Parts of the land are let to local farmers, who use the land for their livestock, and one hundred acres of arable land are also let to the local tenant farmer.
The restoration work involved reverting the land from arable back to parkland, as it would have been in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The land is deliberately not intensively farmed, in order to help the local ecology and allow the grassland to become rich, and wild plants and flowers to flourish. The parkland has been planted with over 7000 new trees over the last eight years. Future plans for the estate will build on the principle of sustainable farming using traditional organic methods, including the introduction of rare breed livestock, such as longhorn cattle and downland sheep. Four rescued shire horses are accommodated on the Library estate, and they are being trained to work the land in a traditional way.
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