Farming in the National Park

Hay Meadow Black Face Tups

The Northumberland National Park landscape, as we see it today, has been shaped by thousands of years of farming.

Today over three quarters of Northumberland National Park is farmed. It is characterised by farmsteads surrounded by enclosed, fertile fields which give way to open rough grazing or moorland. Farming is mainly sheep and cattle production.

There are about 220 farms in the National Park with an average size of 560 hectares. The average farm size in this area is distinctly larger than in other areas of Northumberland and England in particular. The size of farms varies with the terrain, as in the Cheviots the average farm size is 1,205 hectares but the average size of the Hadrian’s Wall farms is only 293 hectares.

Half of the farmed land is owned by four large land owners: the Northumberland Estates, the Ministry of Defence, Lilburn Estates and the College Valley Estates. As a result of this, many of the farms are worked by tenants rather than owners. Often these farms have passed down through the same family of tenants for many generations.