National Trust Pays £2.7 Million for Isle of Wight's Dunsbury Farm

Summary: The National Trust pays £2.7 million for the Isle of Wight's Dunsbury Farm, a crucial acquisition along the islet's dinosaur-rich southwestern coast.

Compton Bay, Isle of Wight's southwestern coast, April 2015: Claire Cox, CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr

The National Trust is capping the fiftieth year of its Neptune Coastline Campaign with its £2.7 million purchase of 407.29-acre Dunsbury Farm on southwestern Isle of Wight’s Compton Bay.

Bordering and sometimes straddling the Military Road stretch of the island’s southwest coast, Dunsbury Farm frames Compton Bay and Downs, where chalky cliffs and grassy downlands serve as ideal habitats for 33 butterfly species, including the Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia). A colorful orange-and-black butterfly native to Eurasia, the Glanville fritillary only currently occurs in the United Kingdom as a highly restricted species on the Isle of Wight’s southern coast and in the Channel Islands. The trust plans to partner with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight branch of Dorset-based Butterfly Conservation to safeguard the rare fritillary and to boost such other declining, calcareous grassland butterflies as Adonis Blue (Polyommatus bellargus) and Chalk Hill Blue (Polyommatus coridon).

Wildlife-rich Compton Downs also features diverse wildflowers, including seven orchid species as well as early gentian (Gentianella anglica). Endemic to southern England, including the Isle of Wight, early gentian is considered to be nationally scarce, with listing as a priority species on the original UK BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) of 1995 to 1999. Early gentian, which thrives in chalky habitats, has been protected since 1992 under Schedule 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Dunsbury Farm was offered for sale by Patrick Seely, one of three Managing Directors in the London offices of Mooreland Partners LLP, a leading independent transatlantic investment banking provider of M&A (merger and acquisition) and Capital Raising services. Patrick is the great-great grandson of Charles Seely, a Lincolnshire miller’s son whose youthful convalescence from tuberculosis on the Isle of Wight’s west coast inspired him decades later to become a major landowner of West Wight.

The Seely Estate, once encompassing over 10,000 acres of the Isle of Wight’s total area of 94,146 acres, has been sold piecemeal. Compton Farm, along Dunsbury Farm’s north border, was partitioned from the estate through a sale to the National Trust in 1957.

Launched in May 1965 as a long-term project of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, the Neptune Coastal Campaign has the mission of protecting special coastal areas of England, Northern Ireland, and Wales for access by visitors and for protection of wildlife. As the single largest coastal landowner of these coastlines, the National Trust owns and manages 775 miles of coastline through the Neptune project.

Tony Tutton, the National Trust’s Isle of Wight general manager, describes acquisition of Dunsbury Farm as “a crucial piece of the coastal jigsaw” on the Isle of Wight, where coastal erosion occurs at a rate of almost 5 feet (1.5 meters) per year. The increased area protected by the trust facilitates plans for continued access and for rewilding the landscape, especially through mixed farming of livestock and cereal crops.

A strategy of light grazing, unkempt field edges, and crop stubble will provide winter food to encourage the return of once common farmland birds. Hoped-for returns include the linnet, meadow pipit, grey partridge, skylark, Dartford warbler, meadow pipit, skylark and yellowhammer.

The hefty acquisition of Dunsbury Farm expands the continuous stretch of coastal landscape deftly managed by the National Trust for the twofold purpose of enjoyment by visitors and protection of rich, safe habitats for wildlife. The crucial jigsaw piece gives the much loved southwestern coastal stretch, a landscape favored by 19th-century British poetry giant Alfred Lord Tennyson and rich in dinosaur-era fossils, both a hope and a future.

rare Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) behind sea wall at Ventnor, Isle of Wight's south coast: Pengannel, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Compton Bay (CC BY ND 2.0): Claire Cox, CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/clairemcox/17099422432/

Glanville fritillary: Pengannel, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/pengannel/542900962/

For further information:

"Being Part of the Landscape - Patrick Seely." Island Life Magazine > Interviews.
Available @ http://www.visitilife.com/being-part-of-the-landscape/

"Fifty years of Neptune Coastline Campaign." National Trust > Features.
Available @ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/coast-and-countryside/neptune-coastline-story/

Morris, Steven. "National Trust acquires Isle of Wight farmland that inspired Tennyson." The Guardian > World > UK. Oct. 22, 2015.
Available @ http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/23/national-trust-acquires-isle-of-wight-farmland-that-inspired-tennyson

Perry, Simon. "A sizeable chunk of the West of Wight has just sold." On The Wight. Oct. 23, 2015.
Available @ http://onthewight.com/2015/10/23/dunsbury-farm-national-trust-sale/

Wright, Richard. "National Trust's £2.7 million Isle of Wight land deal." Isle of Wight County Press Online > News. Oct. 23, 2015.
Available @ http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/news/national-trusts-27-million-isle-of-wight-land-deal-92894.aspx