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For over eight hundred years, the great family of Berkeley has owned land on the banks of the River Severn and, in return for their great holdings, defended the Marches from incursions from Wales. Like so many great estates, its family suffered financially during the early years of the 20th Century and much land had to be sold. Ernest Cook was able to save a large block of it from further fragmentation, so that the dairy farming and livestock rearing traditions remain, (though, sadly, not the making of the famous Farmhouse Double Gloucester cheese).
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The Estate is also famous for its woodlands, where the Trust is growing English oak trees, which will be ready for harvesting in perhaps a hundred years from now. The Trust's largest organic farm lies on this Estate.
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