Nethercott House is a huge Victorian manor house, with beautiful grounds and amazing views towards Dartmoor. Situated just outside the village of Iddesleigh, close to the River Torridge, it is twenty minutes north of Okehampton.
Children’s author Michael Morpurgo and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children at Nethercott House in Devon in 1976. The charity offers urban children from all over the country a unique opportunity to live and work together for a week at a time on a real farm in the heart of the countryside. It is an intense, ‘learning through doing’ experience of a different life – for children who may not know where their food comes from and have limited opportunities to explore the outside world.
We now have three working farms, where we welcome around 3,000 children and 400 teachers a year.
The land surrounding Nethercott House is farmed in partnership with brothers Graham and David Ward, a relationship that goes back to the very earliest days of the Charity when the family partnership of Graham and David and their father John Ward helped Clare and Michael Morpurgo to start Farms for City Children in 1976. Graham has a herd of organic milking Friesians, while David farms sheep and a beef herd. The children also help look after donkeys and a wide range of poultry. There is a large walled kitchen garden where the children help grow the vegetables they eat with their meals.