Lou Renwick co owns Cragend Farm along with her husband Shaun. They bought and set up the business the day the farm was purchased in April 2011 . With our support through the ‘Self-Publishing’ workshops, Louise successfully published her book, Transformation: Lord Armstrong’s Cragend Farm.
Please introduce yourself and your business:
We bought and set up the business the day the farm was purchased on 1st April 2011. April Fools Day! Haha! Foolish some may say to buy an ancient derelict farm, but The Renwick’s saw potential in this old farm and have sensitively restored much of it.
The farm had not been grazed for years and in 2012 they introduced sheep and cattle back for grazing, eventually building a flock of Cheviot pedigree sheep, and Whitebred Shorthorn rare breed cattle. In 2020 we added a herd of rare breed Bagot goats for SSSI areas. We also do bees and trees. The hedgerows and fields have been replaced, and planting of over 1000 trees. Now part of the great Northumberland Forest it has over 100 specimen trees as well as lots of regular ones.
In 2012, the Grade II* listed Hydraulic Silo had the slate roof replaced, as part of major repairs to the whole farm
In 2014 the farm barns were completed as Cragend Grange with B&B rooms.
In 2016 the Cragside Cragend Cottages were restored with East Cottage as a self-catering holiday accommodation.
In 2019 the Silo had the floors, doors and stairs repaired.
This made it possible for people to come and visit the site, and with the backing of Historic Houses, award winning Cragend Farm Tours is now on the map when visiting Northumberland attractions, with its close relationship to Cragside as Lord Armstrong’s Demonstration Centre for Agriculture.
Our target market is visitors who want to see nature and history. Families with children and empty-nesters, silver surfers.
We are a very small business, just husband and wife team with volunteer help from friends and family.
What was the inspiration for your business idea or how did you come up with the idea?
We had previously been hill farmers further up in The Coquet Valley and due to a death in the family, had to sell that farm. Cragend Farm was so derelict that nothing was working and we felt that we had the expertise to bring animals back onto the land and diversify into holiday accommodation with a restoration project. Our love of the countryside and our passion to try to live an more ECO life made this project very interesting for us.
After over a decade of graft, we won an award for our heritage site and it was suggested that we write a book about it all.
What BIPC services or activities did you use? Did you find anything in particular useful? How did the services support them/ help them develop their business idea?
I visited the Self-Publishing morning at Morpeth Library where we were given a talk about how to publish your own book. Publishing a book can be incredibly expensive and agents are not easy to find, but this was a talk that suggested using an Arts Council funded site that was cheaper to produce. The links and suggestions given in that talk helped me publish a test book about our farm called, ‘The Peacock Tale’ a story for children about the farm. Once I knew that I had managed to get a small book published I then progressed to publishing our book about the Cragside links to our farm called ‘Transformation: Lord Armstrong’s Cragend Farm’. This took longer to process but was published in time for a TV appearance with ‘Matt Bakers travels with Mum & Dad’ on More 4 Channel 4. It has also meant we have a product to sell on Heritage Open Day tours. Two local shops in Rothbury now stock my books, and we have a distributor who is hoping to widen the reach for this book.
https://www.northern-heritage.co.uk/products/books/northumberland-books?page=4
What are your plans for the future in the shorter and longer term?
The hope is to pay back the publication costs as quickly as possible and then let the book help us promote the farm. The farm continues to grow and we need as much publicity as possible to get people to visit and see what we have done.
What is your advice for those who are thinking of starting their own business?
Go for it! You will always regret it if you don’t try and do something that is on your mind. Part of the reason we did take on the farm was that we could not bear to watch someone else turn it into something else other than what we hoped for it. We still have plenty to do but we are getting there.
