Our History

  • Our story so far

    • Fred Pitts begins farming on the Chichester Plain and South Downs.

    • First tractor used on the farm.

    • –

      WW2 farm buildings requisitioned for the RAF.

    • Roger Pitts takes over from father William.

  • A farming focus

    • Farm stops using working horses.

    • The Woodhorn Group acquire Battle of Britain airfields as farm land.

    • John Pitts takes over the farm from Roger Pitts.

    • Conversion of farm buildings into office space, later to become the Woodhorn Business Centre.

  • Embracing diversification

    • Conversion to a fully organic farming operation begins; diversification into green waste recycling starts.

    • Ham Farm acquired.

    • Earth Cycle brand of compost & topsoil created.

    • Solar farm built.

  • Expanding our purpose

    • John Pitts awarded sustainable farmer of the year by Farmers Weekly Magazine.

    • Earth Cycle ecommerce website launched.

    • The business achieves certification for ISO 9001 and 14001 standards.

    • Major investment at our Tangmere composting site including electrification of compost screening, new distribution facility and new weighbridge system.

  • Embracing new opportunities

    • We gain certification of milk production without antibiotics within our dairy herd (PWAB).

    • Electrification of compost screening at our Runcton compost site.

    • Addition of a 50kw solar system at our Tangmere composting facility.

    • Woodhorn Farm fresh milk vending launched.

  • Growing through innovation

    • Fawley topsoil production opened.

    • Rebrand and launch of our new Earth Cycle website.

    • Creation of Earth Cycle Community Garden at Aldingbourne Country Centre.

    • Woodhorn Farm opens new vending location in Chichester.

The history of The Woodhorn Group, as told by John Pitts, current custodian of the farm and owner of the business.

The Pitts family have farmed at Woodhorn Farm since 1882 when my great grandfather, Fred Pitts, moved here from Devon. I am therefore the 4th generation farming at Woodhorn. Farming remains at the heart of our Business but we have diversified and grown significantly over time.

The land that we farm was, once, under the sea and the mixed soils here (gravels, brickearths and so on) are all ice age marine deposits that go back at least 500,000 years. Archaeologists have found flint tools made by the earliest humans including early Neolithic flints (4000–3400BC) which are now stored at the Chichester Museum. The land has been farmed continuously ever since.

In the late 19th century a huge agricultural recession prevailed as a consequence of cheap food flooding the country from the Empire. In Sussex the big landowners such as the Church could not find tenants to farm their land.

A group of West Country farmers saw an opportunity and got together, hired a train on which they loaded their cattle and sheep, horses, carts and ploughs and left Devon to ‘go east’. My Great Grandfather, Fred Pitts, was one of these pioneers and took the farm at Woodhorn on in 1882.

Passing from Son to Son, my Father, Roger, worked with my Grandfather on the farm as a young boy. After serving in the RAF as a rear gunner in bombers, he came back to the farm and took over. Father oversaw a revolution in food production at Woodhorn.

These Farmers were true innovators embracing the new technologies of artificial fertilisers, fungicides, modern breeding techniques in crops and livestock and took the country from famine to feast in only a couple of decades.

I took over from my Father in 1989. Nationally, farming has struggled economically throughout my time and motivated me to change and diversify. I have also had an enduring passion for the wider environment and my Community that has driven some of our more prosaic objectives.