Nurturing Nature

The wildlife around Emma Sutton’s home at Higher Walton near Preston inspired her to pursue her life’s dream. Emma Mayoh reports.

- Emma Mayoh

ALL it took was a drive down the bumpy track to Mosney and Emma Sutton was taken. Hook, line and sinker. The land may have been overgrown and the buildings in a state of disrepair but this patch of land, a peaceful riverside idyll just outside Preston, had to be hers.

‘It was really overgrown but the hedgerows were absolutely teaming with robins,’ remembered Emma. ‘There were blue tits and finches and it felt like they were showing me and guiding me onto the grounds.

‘This was the very first time I set foot on Mosney ground. You couldn’t see more than a few metres in front of you. I was walking our Labrador and two roe deer leapt out in front of me. If I’d held out my hand I could have touched them. I don’t know who was more shocked. There haven’t been many days since then that we haven’t had a visit from the deer.’

Emma, with husband Dave, spent a few years renovating an old barn at the riverside site while they lived with their children, Skye and Tom, in a run-down bungalow next door. But Mosney has become much more than a family home. Not only have Emma’s parents and sister built their own homes on the same land, it has also been the inspiration and catalyst for Emma to pursue a lifelong dream – to design and make her own products and run her own business.

‘I’ve always been creative and I’d always wanted to be an artist,’ said Emma. ‘But I was never brave enough to go for it. When we built our house it developed my confidence to project manage and to get something that I really wanted.