Balancing Act

Can one of England’s great lowland estates, Holkham in Norfolk, support agriculture and shooting, as well as wildlife? We meet Jake Fiennes, its head of conservation, to find out.

- Patrick Barkham

Jake Fiennes’ pick-up truck bumps down a track across marshy meadows, as we follow the low dash of a female sparrowhawk. A buzzard squats in a hawthorn, and a marsh harrier glides over the reedbed. In the space of five minutes, there’s also a quivering kestrel, a red kite, a grey heron, two brown hares, a Chinese water deer and the swirling majesty of 5,000 honking brent and pink-footed geese choosing a place to land.

This uplifting abundance of wildlife has made the 9,000-acre nature reserve at Holkham a justly popular place of pilgrimage on the North Norfolk coast. But Holkham is not simply a paradise for wild birds and a mecca for 800,000 annual visitors – about eight times more than the RSPB’s celebrated Minsmere reserve. This 25,000-acre estate also includes one of lowland Britain’s biggest farms, with a long history of innovation.

Thomas Coke of Holkham pioneered crop rotation in the 18th century. Holkham also invented the driven shooting that is the scourge of many nature-lovers today. But is this grand estate in the vanguard of a new environmental revolution?

The current Thomas Coke, the eighth Earl of Leicester, has recently hired Jake to spearhead the conservation effort at Holkham. Jake is an influential conservationist and estate manager, acclaimed by the nature writer Mark Cocker for transforming the Raveningham estate in South Norfolk into a wildlife paradise. He is part of the government’s review of national parks, and also sits on the National Farmers’ Union Environment Forum.

Future of farming

British farmland will undergo seismic change after Brexit. Does Jake’s appointment indicate that Britain’s biggest landowners are drastically changing direction to favour nature-friendly farming? Could our great estates even embrace rewilding?