Who Needs Spring Watch?

Chillesford Lodge is delighted to release “Minsmere without the Crowds!”

A short film put together by rising star cameraman Rowan Aitcheson which shows everyday sightings on the Estate filmed over 5 days in June.

Deer, badger, barn owl and bittern are just some of the reasons why living here is so special. The owl majestically flying low over the backs of our Red Poll cattle is almost certainly related to the owl photographed here by Eric Hosking in 1948 (below).

Eric’s famous photograph of a barn owl in full flight returning to our Suffolk barn, is a sight we now see as the owl of this film feeds voles to a clutch of chicks born here this spring. Eric Hosking’s pioneering career as a wildlife photographer, and his exceptional images, inspired a National interest in birdwatching and helped grow the RSPB into the organisation it is today.

The Suffolk barn of 1948 is now plastered and painted, the door now a window channelling light into a cavernous kitchen. Perhaps we should have called it Hosking House? Named Wheelhouse it is for sale to bird lovers and others, one of only two properties still available from Phase Two of our development.

With fantastic views to the lowland grazing marshes, saltings and Butley Creek, Wheelhouse and Ruston are regularly visited by flocks of swallows, gold finches, wagtails and warblers, with egrets, lapwing and stone curlew combing the landscape and raising their young.

If Eric Hosking were living here today, he would see it much the same as it has always been, only a little more comfortable we hope. Just ask Rowan!

View the video

Chillesford Lodge Estate

Beautiful Homes in a Wildlife Heaven

June 2019