Little Heath Farm, our lovely garden Nursery, its Tearoom, our savings and our health were taken from us by devastating National Trust actions imposing a £335,000.00 charge without warning. This is what happened.

We are Jonathan and Vanessa, both over 70yrs.

We agree National Trust has to raise a lot of money, but not in the way it was done to us, and to others. For years we paid Trust subscriptions. Now we feel betrayed, shocked and appalled at the atrocious methods used to impose without warning, a false £335K charge to access the Farm, which forced its closure and loss of it. Advisors say the methods the Trust used were unlawful.

Firstly, all money contributed is managed by accountant Mr GJ Bishop FCA. He will oversee expenditure and issue regular reports contributors can view. The agreement with him is available on request. We expect a good settlement from National Trust; plus costs in which case we will refund contributions to those requesting it. Our documentary evidence against them is extensive and irrefutable. Every statement has verifiable proof.

Here is a summary of what National Trust did to us. If you want to know more, it is followed by a more detailed outline that shows more about the disgraceful actions of the Trust.

Little Heath Farm dates from 1830. In 2018 we took over the management to renovate the badly overgrown garden Nursery, (click to see more pics )

the popular Tearoom, and the poor condition tenanted cottages. We had a partnership with the owners David and Ingrid who lived in Wales, one of them being elderly becoming extremely ill.

Over 6 years, all our cash and resources, blood sweat and tears with many 10 hour days, went into successfully restoring the Nursery. This is same view as above.

(click to see more pics ) and getting the customers back, despite the 18 month struggle surviving Covid shutdowns and customers slow to return. During the Spring and Summers, Vanessa was there every weekend, as well tending to the many customers buying plants. She loved the flowers she grew and was a fount of plant information that many customers came to her for.

Payment for our work was to come from the cottages sales. They had extensive dry rot. By late 2023, Jonathan and his team had rebuilt two of the five farm cottages using traditional methods. They were near the point of sale of two with firm buyers. Work was well underway on the other three and outside works. There were many very difficult problems he was skilled at resolving (click to see pics of before and after )

In December 2023, just as we were completing a re-finance of the building work loan, without warning National Trust imposed a £335,000.00 charge payable straightaway (30 days). They had many documents stating we were about to complete re-financing. They said the charge was in case we may in the future convert the Tearoom and Stores into cottages. The £335k was a false value the Trust calculated for cottages that did not exist nor were planned and had no value to make a charge for.

The Trust knew that this £335k charge would immediately devalue the Farm by £335k. That caused our re-finance loan to be cancelled which then caused the existing loan to go into default and incur penalty interest

Despite many efforts to resolve the charge with the Trust, they even instantly rejected a last pitch solution that gave them a better deal. Once our Bank was told of this charge, and the re-finance cancellation, repayment of our existing loan went to Court. Despite a year of our fighting, with many Court hearings while we tried various solutions, penalty interest rose to £21k per month. It was impossible to continue, eviction happened April 2025.

The Bank took possession of the Farm taken as reported by The Telegraph and Daily Mail-online. We were devastated losing our much loved Nursery, Tearoom, cottages, all our retirement savings and six years unpaid work. This is the same view as those above !!! (click to see other pics of how it was destroyed ).

Now the Bank has commenced proceedings to take David and Ingrid’s home in Wales. They have nowhere to go. They had rescued the derelict farm in 1970 and put their heart and soul into preserving the historic farm buildings and the setting.

The Bank used false descriptions by refusing to state, after we notified them, that there were 5 cottages being restored, they sold Little Heath Farm at auction a year later March 2026 for £650k, when it had been valued just before eviction at £2m.

National Trust caused the loss and destruction of our lovely Nursery. The work on the historic cottages was devastated. The pictures show how it was just before our eviction and how it became one year later.

See how much customers loved the Nursery and Tearoom and all the pics they put up, and the websites we had for the Nursery. And, the link to our petition to help us get action against National Trust

Little Heath Farm Petition link

Tearoom Instagram

Nursery Instagram

Little Heath Nursery website

The next part gives a bit more detail for those who would like to know.

It is quite long, but much shorter than the 75 page legal document !!!

Here is a more detailed outline of the appalling things they did

Our partnership with David and Ingrid, owners of Little Heath Farm from 1970, was to restore and protect the decayed historic farm buildings dating from 1830’s. The Nursery had started in the 1970’s. Following the retirement of its previous managers, much of it was decayed and covered with massive brambles up to 5 ft high. The cottages were conversions in the 1980s in order to preserve the original derelict farm buildings. This historic farmyard setting looked almost the same as it did in 1830, something that National Trust should want to protect. There are few original looking farm settings from the 1800s.

Jonathan managed, and worked on, the restoration of the five cottages there, with his 52 years of experience, and his team of skilled craftsmen. Vanessa took over the Nursery and grew a wide range of plants, many rare and unusual.

We were on site every day, weekends too. For those six years we gave it everything. It was a peaceful place where happy customers from far and wide, would lose track of time. The popular Tearoom, originally the cowshed, was often packed, with seating amongst the flowers, and indoors. £300,000 Ingrid had inherited was part of the money spent on cottage refurbishments.

The first two had to be fully re-built after discovering rampant dry rot. We worked hard to ensure the cottages were attractive to good standards retaining original features, which had achieved the two firm buyers.

Then National Trust hit us

Since 1830, the entry road to the Farm was across a strip of roadside land. In 1895 National Trust was created. In 1907 the Trust became owners of this roadside strip (and many others). Then, in 2021 after 120 years of the Farm’s access, the Trust wrote to confirm their acceptance that we had long-standing rights of access over the strip, but told us they would like to issue a formal access agreement.

The Trust used persuasive arguments, some of which we later found were untrue, that this agreement was best for us.

The Trust created a contract to issue this agreement (an Easement) with terms that stated the only required payment was a set-up fee that crept to over £10,000. It was a no-charge agreement. We paid promptly through our acting solicitors upon the Trust’s request. The Trust said any later additional cottages would, if and when it happened, require a separate agreement with a profit share charge to the Trust. The Trust assured us that share would be low and not injurious to the Farm.

Two years of delays by the Trust followed. We wrote and wrote asking them to issue the no-charge agreement. Over many months in 2023 we told them again and again ever more strongly that we were completing an agreed refinancing for our cottage refurbishment loan that now needed this agreement. The Trust knew exactly how urgent it was. Each time they replied that the agreement would be issued.

Towards the end on 2023, the Trust ONLY started to issue the agreement when, for the third time, we notified the Trust in the strongest terms that their delays were going to cause us to lose the Farm and we would claim against them for our loss.

In December 2023, they issued one that charged £335,000.00, payable on signing. This was THREE weeks after they confirmed in writing again that the no-charge agreement required no further payment than the set-up fees.

The Trust said £335k was their share of the value of five extra cottages that we might build by converting the Tearoom and old Nursery buildings. The Trust had previously asked to see a planning consent for extra cottages. We had replied that there was none, no planning application had been made, nor was one in process, nor planned. The Trust had even seen the planning authority report stating that the authority was against it and would not grant five.

The Trust ignored this. It proceeded as if planning consent for an additional five had been granted. They calculated the extra value for these fictional cottages and made their demand for a 30% share of this non-existent additional value. The Trust demanded payment of a false amount IMMEDIATELY for something that didn’t exist, might never happen, and based on a value that did not exist. Some have said that is fraudulent.

What happened next

We told them straight away that the payment demand would bankrupt the Farm. We strongly notified them that they had us under duress. They offered to change it so that the money was only paid when extra cottages were sold, BUT they still registered the £335,000 agreement with Land Registry. Our Bank knew exactly what that caused, it devalued the Farm by £335k.

It immediately reduced what we could borrow by that amount. Our refurbishment loan was cancelled because the Farm was now not valuable enough. The Trust is very experienced in these property matters, they knew very well that this deferred liability would immediately devalue the Farm and devastate any loans. It seems they wanted this to happen after we notified them that the £335k made any future additional cottages financially unviable.

£335k was deducted from what we could borrow. In reality, we paid the £335k immediately as soon as the Trust issued the first agreement with the £335k false profit share. Their only interest was getting £335k, if not from us, then from a lender taking possession.

Our re-finance lender was determined to find a way to complete the loan. But, In May 2024, after the Trust had changed the agreement terms and profit calculation to their substantial advantage, it flatly refused our re-finance lender’s simple solution to overcome the devalue problem, even though it gave the Trust a better deal.

For now, we have to keep under wraps other scarcely believable things the Trust did which stopped our re-finance. This only became apparent after studying the 900+ emails between us, our solicitors, the Trust and their solicitors, the re-finance lender and their solicitors.

We fought the Banks’ possession claim through the courts for a year while we tried other solutions. The legal fees and costs were over £35k. Although we had two firm buyers for the two re-built cottages, wherever we went for help, that registered agreement with a £335k liability, killed it. Meanwhile penalty interest on their loan grew to £21,000 a month which was affordable without the £335k charge. In April 2025 we had to let the lender take possession of the Farm.

For a year after possession, the Bank left it to decay, and ignored our notifications about low cost urgent repairs that were causing damage. In March 2026 they sold it at auction for £650,000. Three months before the Bank took possession, another Bank had valued it at £2 million. The only reason for value loss was that the auction listing described it only as a “farm with dilapidated buildings” and left out any mention of the five cottages, the Tearoom and the two shops. We told the auctioneers twice. They said they’d sort it. They didn’t. The buyer told us he had bought an amazing bargain. Another stressful legal battle.

What it has done to us

Everything we put in since 2018 has gone, and so has the Nursery, the Tearoom and the cottages we spent six years restoring. What is left is desolation and weeds.

We have both been made ill by what the Trust put us through. Jonathan had a mild stroke Christmas 2024, and another one on Christmas Eve 2025 that caused a 70% loss of sight in his right eye that hasn’t recovered. David and Ingrid are in the similar position, and now the Bank is now trying to take their house in Wales for a loss on the sale the Bank caused itself. David is 87, long term seriously ill and permanently bed-bound.

We are heading into retirement, and we are frightened for our futures. We had made financial arrangements for these years, but the loss of the Farm and all we put in destroyed that. The Trust took it away. This should be the time for spending what is left of our time on family, and instead Jonathan is working every day on one legal battle after another which he can do from several years of law lectures and 30 years of experience with it. With very little in the way of resources and under a great deal of pressure, we are fighting with all our effort to put right what was done to us in a way that will help others affected by the Trust.

Thank you for reading this.