The History & Heritage of

Chypraze Farm

Agricultural heritage:

Farming is obviously the activity that has endured longest at Chypraze as the stone hedges and ancient field patterns that go back to those pre-historic times show. It is these field patterns, gateways, hedges and rough cliff pasture, together with its unique package of fauna and flora that categorise it as an “Environmentally Sensitive Area” protected by an environmental management plan that the farm is now obliged to adhere to.

The farm buildings themselves reveal an evolution in both construction and usage pattern. All early buildings are of a traditional solid granite stone walling topped with slate roofing in the “scantle” style that makes use of slates of all sizes, with the larger ones to at the eaves and smaller at the ridge.

The Medieval looking “Shippon” barn with its attendant small enclosures and out houses probably formed the nucleus of the original small holding that would have included goats, pigs, chickens and geese as well as pasture and cattle.

The main farm house appears to be a late 18th century addition together with the milking barn and stable opposite as cattle rearing expanded supported by growing a mixture of feeds in fields tilled by horse drawn machinery.

The Second World War brought about several notable changes;
Firstly and significantly for Chypraze a bevy of Land Army Girls came, learned the trade and many stayed.

Secondly a focus on home grown and affordable food and scientific advances persuaded farmers to gradually intensify their production, and to give up the mixed farming that had hitherto enabled them to be self sufficient in feedstuff and fertilisers.

Increasingly these inputs were bought in and output from the most productive activity maximised with help of tractors. For Chypraze and the surrounding farms this meant dairy farming Guernsey cows, though potatoes and some pigs also survived. The number of livestock increased and with it the need for more over wintering quarters so we see added to the farmyard buildings in block work topped with asbestos sheeting. No thought was given to traditional style or even sea views in the thrust for intensification.

However Chypraze still had horses in the 1960s and still grew mangolds, kale and barley to supplement bought in feed into the 1970s. The process seems to have been self defeating for the relatively small farms of Cornwall which despite taking out hedges, widening gateways and using ever bigger machinery got poorer and poorer returns from the dairy market. Pigs and hens have been banished altogether to battery houses elsewhere and potatoes are a mad spring dash under plastic.

So we are left today with buildings from all phases of farming in the area all requiring constant upkeep if their heritage value is to be upheld. The original slate roofs are of particular concern as they require particular skills and materials to maintain.

It now appears that intensification and dependence on imported foods and chemicals may not have been the best way forward and are seeing much of the farming world go full circle and return to less intensive agriculture, better environmental management and more organic productivity.

Which way will Chypraze go? Will it farm at all or will it succumb to “diversity” development and intensification of its holiday and letting activities to provide a living – and resources to keep up the “heritage” value? Will it become a heritage site, a museum or a sustainable enterprise?