From Nightingales to Turtle Doves, Violet Dor Beetles to Purple Emperors, there are surprises galore at the estate of Knepp Castle. The author visits the site to see this long-term rewilding experiment in action.
Twenty years ago, the 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) Knepp Castle estate, a few miles south of Horsham, in West Sussex, was a conventional mixed farm. It fitted into the landscape of small fields, hedges and scattered woods that characterises the heavy clay of the Low Weald.