THE Newt in Somerset has won a controversial planning case to build a new farm near an historic hillfort.
Emily Estate - a trading name of The Newt – applied in June 2024 to demolish Manor Farm in the village of Yarlington and construct a new farm on fields near Yarlington Sleight and Cadbury Castle.
Planning South Committee approved the plans on March 18, citing the replacement of the historic farmstead “which is no longer fit for purpose.”
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The proposed farm will include four roundhouses for milking and overwintering cattle, office facilities for farm staff, ancillary buildings for straw, silage hay and machinery, and a new track to Avalon Farm and Whitewoods farm.
The new farm will also accommodate 668 beef and dairy animals, 100 of which will be milked twice daily in one roundhouse.
Somerset Council stated that “once the replacement farm is complete the vast majority of the existing farm buildings and yards at Manor Farm will be demolished and the area landscaped”.
Some 324 people submitted comments relating to the controversial application. It was noted by a Somerset Council planning officer that there were “many” letters of support from residents of Yarlington and that objectors “almost universally” lived further afield.
Despite initially objecting, North Cadbury and Yarlington Parish Council supported the application, believing the “benefits of the revised plan outweigh its disadvantages.”
Black Eight - a community group from Yarlington, Galhampton and North Cadbury – led the opposition to the plans. Its name refers to the agricultural land the farm will be built on.
The group commissioned The Landscape Partnership (TLP) to provide commentary on the plans. TLP concluded that: “the limited benefits that would arise from the removal of some of the buildings at Manor Farm would not balance the harm brought about by the construction of the replacement farm buildings in an agricultural field”
These buildings, it said, were “divorced from existing development and necessitating extensive access arrangements.”
The countryside charity, CPRE Somerset also objected to the plans, citing the valued landscape between Yarlington Sleights and Cadbury Castle which documents submitted by The Newt, it said, “grossly understate” the landscape.
It also said that the countryside views would be “partially blocked by the proposed over-scaled buildings of up to three-storey height.
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