‘Our connection to this landscape is deep and our commitment is to protect our heritage for the future. We want to see it flourish for the next generation,’ say Oscar and Maria Yerburgh, custodians of the Barwhillanty, the 5,000-acre working family estate in the Glenkens
As the latest custodians of the 5,000-acre Barwhillanty Estate in the Glenkens, Oscar and Maria Yerburgh have their work cut out.
The estate, which lies east of Parton and Loch Ken, has productive forestry at its heart, plus sheep and venison farming, deer stalking, fishing and game shooting, farm lets and residential properties.
“As custodians for our generation we aim to improve it for generations to come,” says Oscar whose family has owned and run Barwhillanty since 1884.
“We have invested in opening up the estate to tourism and the wider community,” says Maria. “We want to create a community that shares and experiences the environment we are blessed with here, to encourage people to reconnect to nature and themselves.”
As well as investing in their residential portfolio, they have renovated several estate houses to create comfortable, modern holiday lets with more in the pipeline. The couple also run retreats incorporating yoga, wild swimming, healthy eating, and walking, as well as garden open days and arts events including this summer’s Picnic Prom in the walled garden.
And there are plans for more, including supper clubs, cinema nights, and craft workshops.
Oscar’s parents, John and Ann, renovated the estate’s walled garden in 1998, adding a spectacular stone water feature by Galloway artist Joe Smith as its centrepiece.
“When I came back, I realised people weren’t really coming up here and seeing it,” says Oscar. He has since put a kitchen, including wood fired pizza oven, into the original stone outbuildings at the back of the walled garden, where the estate’s own lamb, venison and vegetables can be cooked for supper guests, dining on the terrace.
A giant teepee on the lawn, which has opening sides, can be used for events and weddings.
Barwhillanty hosts a couple of weddings each year although Oscar and Maria are determined to offer a diversity of experiences rather than becoming predominantly a wedding venue. They hope to recruit another member to their team, to help manage events and the holiday cottages.
With four young children – Acacia, aged eight; Leander, six; Thalia, five, and Xanthus, three – to think about Oscar says: “There’s a delicate balance between being a home and being a business. We have to get that right.”
“With the events we choose to do, we are still able to protect our privacy as a family,” adds Maria. “We want people to come not as an imposition but as a joy. We feel we can put our hearts into it rather than it being a chore.”
Oscar and Maria say both their passions and values come together in the Barwhillanty retreats – ‘where wholesome living meets yoga and wellbeing’. “We love doing them,” says Maria. “We put everything into it.”
Oscar’s family’s brewing and hospitality business Daniel Thwaites, based in the north of England, dates back to 1807. After World War Two, his father John, while still very much involved in the business, decided to make the family estate in Galloway his permanent base.
He was a pioneer in forestry, seeing great opportunities in the industry, and had a tree nursery built in what is now the walled garden. Sixty per cent of the estate is still in productive forestry.
Oscar, who grew up at Barwhillanty, inherited the estate when John died in 2014. “I decided to come back permanently. I had met Maria in Edinburgh, where we both worked. We married in 2015, and our first child was born in 2016.
“Returning to Barwhillanty was a great opportunity for family life. It was definitely a lifestyle choice, but we then had to think ‘what do we do with somewhere like this?’”
“It’s been a great decision,” says Maria. “It’s lovely for the children to grow up in nature, get that understanding of where things come from, being immersed in wildlife and farming, seeing life as it really is.”
Maria, who is half Greek, grew up in Surrey and moved to Edinburgh to work as a dentist. She continues to practice two days a week in Dalbeattie, which she loves. She takes an holistic, educational approach to her work and online, as The Lifestyle Dentist, she shares her preventative philosophy and mindful approach to oral health, helping people understand the connections between lifestyle, nutrition, and a healthy mouth - and how that leads to a healthy mind and body.
Yoga is a key part of Maria’s approach to health and wellbeing and, as a qualified yoga and aerial yoga instructor, she runs weekly classes in her studio on the estate, as well as incorporating yoga into the retreats.
The importance of nutrition and good, healthy food connects back to the farming practices of the estate. Oscar is keen to strike a balance between profitability and environmental impact in forestry, farming, and game management.
With no background in farming or land management, taking on the running of Barwhillanty has been a big learning curve for him but, he says: “I’m of the view that you surround yourself with people who know what they’re talking about and learn that way. You learn a lot by doing.
“We aspire to be as regenerative as we can in our farming practices and are encouraged to see others doing more of the right thing too which is exciting.”
The estate incorporates three let farms – one dairy and two beef and sheep – as well as the home farm, which has sheep and red deer.
The wild population of roe deer are managed by shooting and Oscar is keen to make use of the healthy meat through the estate’s community larder, and by selling the venison through Barwhillanty’s website, which already offers pheasant, lamb, and garden vegetable boxes.
Always having been a traditional sporting estate, Barwhillanty still offers shooting, stalking, and fishing weekends but, Oscar explains: “Everything has to be done in a delicate balance of sustainability. We are more about offering experiences than numbers.”
“Our willingness to share our journey is an invitation to experience; an opportunity to enjoy and a warm welcome to this special place we call home,” is how Oscar and Maria sum up their approach on their website.
“We have a real, genuine love for this part of the world,” says Oscar. “Our connection to this landscape is deep and our commitment is to protect our heritage for the future. We want to see it flourish for the next generation.”
