Mapperton House, Gardens & Wildlands

About Mapperton House, Gardens & Wildlands

About Mapperton Wildlands – https://mappertonwildlands.com/
Mapperton lies within the Dorset Area of Outstanding beauty, with magnificent views over the hills and combes towards Bridport and the Jurassic Coast. Mapperton’s landscape had been shaped over hundreds of years by traditional management for food, fuel and timber. This included ancient land management practices such as pollarding, coppicing, hedge laying, extensive grazing by cattle and sheep, fruit harvesting and low input arable farming. The intensification of farming and forestry in the 20th century led to recent large scale changes in the landscape.

In response, Mapperton has decided to change its approach to land management. Mapperton have also been inspired by the success of the Knepp Estate in Sussex, who have pioneered rewilding in the UK. Following some consultancy provided by Knepp in 2020, it will now employ a combination of rewilding, traditional conservation and regenerative agriculture in order to deliver significant ecological benefits over the coming years.

Mapperton will restore species-rich wood pasture by letting large herbivores shape a more wooded and natural landscape, alongside more traditional conservation interventions such as targeted grazing, tree planting and pond creation. Rewilding can be defined as the ‘long-term regeneration of an area using minimum intervention and natural processes’. By introducing a careful mix of herbivores which replicate the intensity of grazing and browsing last seen during the Mesolithic Period, it will restore the degraded landscape and create a flourishing ecosystem.

About Ben Padwick
Ben is the Ranger at Mapperton. Ben studied Game and Conservation Management at Sparsholt for 3 years before working on a 4,800 acre estate in Norfolk. This focused on the conservation of ground nesting birds such as grey partridges, stone curlews and many other species. He then went to live and work in Australia for 2 years on a thoroughbred horse stud before returning home to England in June 2021, with the aim of working on a rewilding project. He joined Mapperton in April 2022.
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The tour will last for 2 ½ hours and covers a distance of 2 miles. Do wear appropriate footwear and bring waterproofs if it is expected to rain. Parts of the tour will take you up steep hills and across uneven ground, which may be challenging for anyone less able and with mobility difficulties.