Humberstone Bank Farm – beyond nature

Yorkshire Water is making an interesting offer – help them improve water quality, water retention and carbon storage on their land while ‘working with the sporting interest’ on an upland farm north of Blubberhouses.

Blubberhouses Moor in Yorkshire is mentioned in Inglorious (page 59) as the site where a stroppy rich man, Lord Walsingham, shot 1070 Red Grouse on his own (well, he was the only shooter, he had three Purdeys, two loaders and 40 beaters with him). It is said that he was piqued that royalty had turned down a day’s grouse shooting at his moor (perhaps because there weren’t enough grouse to shoot), so he started at about 5am and finished a little before 7pm and killed 1070 Red Grouse in a day – just to prove a point. That’s no doubt why the road sign says ‘Please drive carefully’. The history and present of driven grouse shooting is punctuated with similar pointless days of mass wildlife-killing, often to make men feel better about themselves.

But back to Humberstone Bank Farm, (which is only near Blubberhouses). Yorkshire Water’s agricultural tenants are retiring and so the water company is taking the land back in-hand, although the shooting rights are owned separately¹ (see Inglorious pages 68-69 for a quick, but I hope informative, gallop through this matter).

This looks a very promising move to maximise the benefits of the site to society and to the company. These benefits would include water quality, carbon storage and biodiversity. A large part of the site (around two thirds) is an SSSI which has been in poor condition but is now (possibly, I don’t know, because there is a management plan in place) in ‘Unfavourable recovering’ condition. The documentation states that Sphagnum recovery and restoration of the peatbogs is an aim of the future of this site.

Yorkshire Water has the following aims:

‘maximising the following outcomes: