Our History
Woodhouse Farm was originally part of the Fisherwick Estate. It’s 3.5-acre walled garden and the house set into the wall, were in the 16th Century the kitchen garden and head gardener’s cottage to ‘a very proper brick’ manor house built by Sir John Skeffington.
By the 17th Century a later John Skeffington was made the Viscount Massereene and Fisherwick descended with the viscountcy until 1755 when the 5th viscount sold the by then mortgaged estate. It passed in quick succession through three owners before being bought by Arthur Chichester, Earl of Donegal, in 1761. The earl, who later became Baron Fisherwick, Earl of Belfast and Marquis of Donegal, set about rebuilding the hall and completely remodelling the surrounding park. His architect and landscape designer was Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.
Of the landscaping work carried out by Brown, the remains of his orangery and an extensive ha-ha can still be seen at Woodhouse Farm, while the remains of the lake, cascade, bridges lie in adjacent Fisherwick Wood. Some of the magnificent lime trees on the farm are believed to be part of Capability Brown/Donegal’s original planting.
The Fisherwick esate’s glory days were short-lived. Tales of gambling debts abound and within a decade of Donegal’s death in 1799, his son had sold the heavily-mortgaged estate. The manorial rights, the hall and much of the land went to RB Howard, lord of Elford (the neighbouring estate on the other side of the River Tame), with much of the remaining land being acquired by Sir Robert Peel, of Drayton Bassett.
By the time Howard died in 1818, he had demolished Fisherwick Hall and the parkland had been divided into farms, one being Woodhouse Farm. The head gardener’s cottage became the farmhouse and the orangery became a cowshed. The wall enclosing the former kitchen garden survives but the adjacent botanical garden with its Chinese pavilion has long disappeared.
In 1936, his descendant FE Howard Paget gave the Elford Estate, including Woodhouse Farm, Fisherwick Wood and other land in Fisherwick, to the City of Birmingham. The gift was made to promote ‘the healthful recreation of the citizens of Birmingham’ and to preserve the rural character of the property.
In the intervening years, large parcels of the Elford Estate have been sold into private hands.
Woodhouse Farm continued as a small farm (22 acres). But in 2009, following the death of the latest tenant, Birmingham City Council announced its intention to sell it at auction.
The local community in Whittington and Fisherwick parish, came together to prevent the sale and turn Woodhouse into a community farm. And in late 2010, the council agreed to grant a lease to Woodhouse Community Farm Ltd, the co-operative set up to fight for and secure the future of the farm.