Land girls

“Soil is the beginning of everything,” Susan, Duchess of Richmond says. “Ninety-five per cent of our food comes from the soil.” Putting something so obvious – yet generally ignored or taken for granted – into such vivid context speaks volumes about the Duchess’s beliefs on husbandry and the way she feels we ought to value the land and look after it.

Now 84, the Duchess is in the library at Goodwood House on a lovely early summer morning, looking glamorous and understated in the palest of pearly pinks and greys. She has the quiet wisdom of age that has tempered, yet not dimmed, her passion for the subject. “It takes millions of years to make soil,” she adds, “and we’ve lost
a third of our arable land [in the UK] in the past 40 years.”

The potentially disastrous consequences of this loss, due to erosion and pollution, spurred the Duchess’s early conversion to organic, sustainable farming methods and the beliefs she formulated “an awfully long time ago” – that ran counter to the post-war shift towards intensive farming. “The thinking was, it was the best way to produce more food,” she says. “Which, of course, we needed. The fact is, it works for a bit, then it depletes the soil and the animals are infected and start needing antibiotics.”

Susan Grenville-Grey’s connection with Goodwood began in 1949, and then in 1951 she married Charles Gordon Lennox – a school friend of her brother’s – the late 10th Duke of Richmond and head of the family that has lived on, farmed and managed this estate since the 1690s. But the catalyst that inspired the Duchess’s thinking about how the estate ought to be farmed was a book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, first published in 1962. Documenting the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Carson’s book was met with fierce opposition by the chemical companies. But it launched the shift of opinion away from intensive industrial farming, and towards today’s understanding that traditional methods might produce more sustainable farms and better food. Silent Spring ultimately led to a nationwide ban on DDT in America, and inspired an environmental movement that ushered in the creation of regulatory bodies such as America’s Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a profound shift in public opinion across the Western world.

Here in England, the Soil Association had already been founded in 1946, soon after increasingly intensive farming methods became common practice after World War II. Susan, Duchess of Richmond became a supporter early on. How lucky, then, that when the Duchess’s son, Charles March, married Janet Astor, her daughter-in-law needed no conversion to this way of thinking. 

“My uncle, David Astor, had founded the Organic Research Centre,” the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon explains. “It was one of the top three in Europe. I was about 26 when I got involved with it. My mother had always been keen on her organic kitchen garden and proper composting. She was part of the hippy mindset, which was seen as a bit cranky back then.” 

“I thought, ‘Aha, I’ve got an ally now!’” the Duchess laughs, and it’s obvious from the intense debate on composting that ensues – including the Duchess's support for “hot composting”, which chews up everything, not just vegetable matter – that these two generations of strong and thoughtful women speak as one. 

“I couldn’t get anything done until Janet came along,” the Duchess continues. “It was a pincer movement on the men, who were worried it was non-commercial.” The long-running debate over the financial viability of organic farming rolls on, but, as the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon says, “Everything is dependent upon the subsidies of the day and, most importantly, the route to market. We’re still in a minority, but there’s a really good market for organic meat and milk now. For premium produce, if it’s the best, you can make money. And you make a third more selling directly.”

One example of this? Today’s artisanal coffee-makers’ quest for the ideal milk with which to craft the perfect latte. It’s a global trend few would have predicted back in 1989 when the 10th Duke took over the running of the estate from his father (a transition repeated in 1994 when the 10th Duke and Duchess passed on the baton to the now Duke and Duchess of Richmond and Gordon). As the Duchess explains, “Our milk is unhomogenised, which means it tastes better. We also believe it is healthier. We’re proud of the freshness of our milk – it will often be drunk within 24 hours of our cows being milked.” 

She continues: “All the specialist coffee shops were selling wonderful coffee, but they didn’t understand how much the quality of the milk they used could affect the taste. We sell raw milk direct from the farm; it’s full of probiotics, and we’ve never had a problem, because our herd is monitored so closely.”

Was it a slow process, implementing their beliefs and methods at Goodwood? Far from it, the Duchess insists: “A lot of farms on the South Downs hadn’t used pesticides for their sheep, so it was easy. It took about 18 months, and we got advice from the ORC when we made the change on the farm, and took on a farm manager who was keen to do things this way. We had a wonderful shepherd, Nick Page, who understood it instinctively.”

The transformation to the countryside that comes with this kind of farming was equally speedy. “The difference in the hedgerows was very quick,” Susan, the Duchess recalls. “The birds, the wildflowers, the quiet on the farm… The animals are so peaceful – they look at you and don’t react.” It was all very different during her childhood, when the impact of intensive industrial farming was beginning to become apparent. And yet this isn’t simply an issue of animal welfare. “The animals’ meat tastes better when they haven’t been stressed and are looked after properly,” she argues.

Today, the Goodwood Estate rears Shorthorns for its dairy products and Red Sussex for beef. “These breeds survive very well on grass, and we’re the only farm that can grow enough feed for our own stock,” the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon points out. “The beef herd is out all the year round and feeds on hay from our grass in winter.” Susan, the Duchess continues with a story from her own life: “It was partly that I was horrified by the standard of animal welfare. Also, I got ill and went to see a brilliant man, [leading nutritionist] Dr Latto, who told me about the effects of chemicals on the body. He put me on a simple diet of wholemeal bread, raw vegetables, no meat, not much dairy – and told me I’d be fine in six months.” She was. “When I had small children,” she adds, “I wanted them to be fed properly.”

Good food is at the heart of both their thinking. The Duchess is vociferous on the subject of long-term health through the generations. As she sees it, “The health of a grandchild is dependent on the health of the grandmother and the food she ate in her pregnancy. My other crusade is breast-feeding. The evidence shows that babies should be entirely breast-fed for the first six months and, if possible, continue until the child is at least one year old. Two is better. I believe there should be a very hefty tax on formula.”

At the heart of their duty to nurture the land for future generations is their love of doing so. The Duchess says, “This year, we’re losing a lot of trees, so we’re trying to recreate some of the 18th-century vistas across the countryside.” 

Susan, Duchess of Richmond continues: “The cedars were planted in 1760; we’re replanting 50 from seeds from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, who collected them from Lebanon and grew the saplings. Because it’s a privately owned estate, they’re happy to do that as they can see the estate still existing in a couple of centuries’ time. We use them as a statement. I give my husband a cedar every 10 years. When we left the house [moving to Molecomb, another house on the Goodwood Estate], I gave him another.”

Both women have particular corners of the estate they hold dear, locations that are steeped in memory and history. “My favourite place is the Trundle,” says the Duchess, “a Bronze Age ring and ditch with a 360-degree view. I go there for perspective. You’re standing on 4,000 years of history, surrounded by orchids and skylarks.”

For the Susan, Duchess of Richmond, the racecourse is a favourite spot: “You can look out on to Midhurst, the forest and the Downs. I love the hillside looking out from Molecomb – I used to ride around it – and Apple Tree Bottom. I used to make up stories for the children about this valley. There are lots of little funny corners I love.”

Love of the land and the landscape is at the heart of everything Goodwood stands for, and these two formidable champions, a generation apart, are equally responsible for its continued success. Both understand how the finer detail is as important as the broad sweep. As the Duchess points out, the restored hedgerows – thanks to the Susan, the Duchess – “provide homes, nests for the swifts and house martins. And they need mud to build their nests. So we’ve got to have muddy puddles.” 

Just as Charles, 11th Duke of Richmond has transformed the Goodwood Estate over the past 25 years, building Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival into global brands, it’s clear that his mother and wife have mounted their own quiet – and very English – revolution, one muddy puddle at a time. 

Interview by Tamasin Day-Lewis. Photographs by Amelia Troubridge