National Trust in the Lake District : A view from Jane Saxon
Jane Saxon, General Manger, National Trust, North and West Lakes
‘Relationships mean a lot. The National Trust may be the landowners, but the farmers, the commoners, are the ones who are out there, working the land day in and day out. It's so important that we do co-create plans and work alongside each other.’
When we arranged to meet Jane Saxon, general manager with the National Trust, we’d planned to wander through woodlands and around Derwent Water, but it’s raining so hard that we decide to stay inside. We shake the water off our coats, and settle in to a room in the northwest office, just south of Keswick, to meet Jane and find out more about the National Trust’s link with the upland commons.
Within the Lake District National Park, the Trust owns around one fifth of the land, including 90 farms with around 55,000 herdwick sheep. In her managerial role, Jane is responsible for a patch covering six valleys, over 33,000 hectares of land in northwest Cumbria, within which are 48 farms. Each farm and each valley has unique characteristics, determined by the cultural heritage, landscape, the climate, and the people; management is complex.
Jane, who has been working with the National Trust for almost 12 years, is passionate about this area. It’s a place she loves and she wants to see it well cared for, and better understood. ‘The commons are there for a lot of people, but not many people understand them. It would be good to share more information with visitors and local communities to help them to understand about the farmers in the valleys and how they manage the fells. Together, with the great conservation work which is carried out on the commons too, I think it's important, and part of the heritage.’
Looking across Derwent Water towards Cat Bells and Derwent Common
Raising awareness of the value and heritage of the fells is just one part of Jane’s role. As we talk about her role, she returns frequently to the challenge of balancing different needs and pressures - cultural heritage, community, climate change, biodiversity and visitor management. She also stresses the importance of relationships when it comes to making decisions, and putting plans into action. Of course, Jane doesn’t look after the vast northwest portfolio on her own. On a huge map of Cumbria, she shows us the areas that are owned by the National Trust, naming valleys, hills, farms, rivers and the six commons in North and West lakes under her team’s care: Eskdale, Stockdale, Nether Wasdale, Kinniside, Langstrath and Derwent commons.
‘I've got a team of around 65, 70 people. It’s big, but it’s probably not big enough!’ But working together extends beyond the NT team: it’s also about working ‘hand in hand’ with tenants and partners. ‘The National Trust may be the landowners, but the farmers, the commoners, are the ones who are out there, working the land day in and day out. It's so important that we do co-create plans and work alongside each other.’
The National Trust in the Lake District and Cumbria is often described as the ‘crown jewels’ of the National Trust. This area is, in fact, the birthplace of the National Trust, going back to the founders, including Canon Rawnsley, and Beatrix Potter, whose legacy included farms and protected flocks of herdwick sheep. The establishment of the National Trust, and with it the birth of the conservation movement, is one of three pillars on which the area’s designation of World Heritage Site status rests. This designation, says Jane, brings its own nuances, and it hasn’t always been easy to find a balance. ‘As a conservation charity, with ambitions to attend to the climate crisis and nature regeneration, we have to think about a sustainable future for farming too, and how we achieve all these things within a World Heritage Site designation.’
“As a conservation charity, with ambitions to attend to the climate crisis and nature regeneration, we have to think about a sustainable future for farming too, and how we achieve all these things within a World Heritage Site designation.”
An evolving landscape : coping with change
Jane talks about the landscape as dynamic, and always evolving, but stresses that priorities have shifted, with an urgency to redress declines in biodiversity and build resilience in the face of floods, droughts and climatic extremes. It is less than ten years since Storm Desmond caused devastation across Cumbria, and Jane is not the only person wondering about the impact of another similar storm. ‘If we have another storm Desmond, and a river does its own thing and knocks down walls, do we need to put those back because that is the cultural heritage? I want to ask UNESCO: how are they dealing with the climate crisis and nature regeneration?’
Among pressing landscape decisions in Cumbria, finding ways to reduce flood risk is high on the agenda. Planting more trees, holding water back and allowing rivers to go back to their original course are all interventions to slow the intensity of flow and hold back the amount of debris that travels to the valleys and villages when there’s heavy rainfall. Making these changes is, as Jane said earlier, about organisations and communities working together. ‘We have some commoners who are really engaged and others who are wary about interventions.’
“It’s not straightforward, but my job is to try to get people on board with the conversation.”
Jane talks about instances where there has been reluctance to make changes - for example through planting trees or hedges, or redirecting the flow of a river - but after an intervention, the results have been really beneficial to see. Often the biggest reason for resistance is fear: what will change look like, how will it affect the land, how might it affect productivity? When things work out well, that’s something to celebrate.
Thinking about ‘good’ commoning
We ask Jane what she thinks ‘good commoning’ is: it’s a question we ask everyone we’re meeting. ‘Most commoners I know feel very privileged to have that position,’ she says. ‘It’s about heritage, and a pride in heritage, and that should be celebrated. But how individual commoners take on their role within the commons associations is important. If one of the commoners makes things difficult, this can have a massive impact on the others. So ‘good commoning’ comes down to how commoners get on, and it’s also about relationships with organisations like ourselves, the landowners in many cases; it’s about having good relationships and being able to work together. I don't think that's always been there in the past.’
“... ‘good commoning’ comes down to how commoners get on, and it’s also about relationships with organisations like ourselves, the landowners in many cases; it’s about having good relationships and being able to work together.”
Jane takes a pause and seems to be picturing the fells in her mind, and the people who are part of them, as if looking across the Lake District from a high point such as Robinson or Great Gable. ‘It goes back, I think, to the hefting system that we have in the Lake District. That's something that we want to protect, through all our farms. We stated a number of years ago that none of our farms would be amalgamated, they would all be individual farms, and we're sticking to that: it’s important to protect those hefted flocks.’
Commoner Craig Fearon gathering Herdwick sheep on Langstrath Common, one of the commons in the National Trust’s northwest portfolio
Jane talks about the value of active shepherding to help sheep stay hefted; so that when different flocks graze on the same unfenced commons, each flock sticks to its own heft or favoured area. She is excited about new entrants coming in: young farmers who are good with dogs and have the potential to spend time on the fell and move the sheep regularly and spread grazing impact. It’s all part of caring for the land. I tell Jane about our own experiences on gathers with shepherds, and how impressed we are with their skill, the way they are with the sheep, and their relationships with their dogs. ‘It’s interesting what you say about the commoner’s relationships with their dog and the flock,’ she reflects, ‘but their relationship with nature is there too. And when we re-let our farms, this is coming through more and more: we're putting it into the particulars and having open conversations. The new entrants aren't afraid to talk about a tree plan, for instance, or to say what they’d like to learn something, perhaps hedge laying, or drystone walling. I'm really keen that we don't lose those skills. We’re looking to work with farmers to set up a hub for rural skills training, and link this with opportunities to learn about water quality, soil quality and resilience.’
Jane Saxon with Commoners from Kinniside and Nether Wasdale, and Becky Willson from Farm Carbon Toolkit
The keys for Jane are working with others, and looking forward. She tells us about work the National Trust is doing with tenants and other land management organisations to visualize - literally draw out - maps of possible future landscapes. The idea is then to make changes together, pooling knowledge and drawing on the different skills within the group, ‘and then hopefully we will get resilient landscapes.’
We’ve been talking for a long time, and we realise that the rain has stopped. We head outside, to the hint of blue sky, for Rob to make Jane’s portrait. As we brace ourselves against the cold wind and raise our voices above the noise of the trees blowing in the wind, Jane reflects on her own learning curve since moving to Cumbria from the northeast. ‘I love the fells, I love being out and it’s an important part of my wellbeing,’ she says. ‘But I have been on a journey. I began by seeing the Lake District fells as a ‘playground’ but have come to understand just how much work goes in to looking after them.’
‘Relationships mean a lot,’ Jane reiterates. ‘If you don't have good relationships, nothing's going to get done. It’s not about me working on my own. It’s about my team, our tenants, the commoners, and our external partners. We're not always going to see eye to eye, but we've got to work together and we’ve got to be able to have robust conversations. And yes, the National Trust might have to give in on something and others might have to give in on something else; the main thing is not to get stuck. I've seen what's happened when relationships haven't been the number one priority: nothing progresses. If someone tells me they’ve been let down in the past, well, OK, I’ll say, let's move on now. Let's change that - I'm here to change it. I want to make progress. We are all facing uncertainty, that’s the reality. So let’s work this through, together.’
“Relationships mean a lot ... We are all facing uncertainty, that’s the reality. So let’s work this through, together.”
