All change at Ellasfield!
Welcome to Ellasfield’s brand new website. We hope you like it! We decided to refresh the look and make it easier to navigate all the incredible offerings that we’re sharing at the Farm this year. As well as all the different therapies and healing experiences, retreats and one-to-one sessions, we are going to be letting out our home to holidaymakers for more people to enjoy what Ellasfield and the surrounding countryside has to offer.
We have come so far from the overgrown paddock and pokey 1920s bungalow we moved into in 2006. It had been a long search for the perfect home, a place I could raise my three-year-old daughter Ella near to a local school for children with disabilities. Ella acquired a brain injury at birth due to lack of oxygen, and was subsequently diagnosed with cerebral palsy, so she needed more support. I also wanted somewhere to start and run a family business, although what that would look like I had no idea, just something Ella could be part of as she grew up.
After looking at 18 properties, as soon as I drove up the lane and parked up to view Kettlesbridge Farm, it felt like coming home. The land spoke to my heart instantly and I could see huge potential in the place. I had a vision of Ellasfield being a hub where folks would come and go.
At the beginning, all I had was this vision and a gut feeling that I acted on it without questioning the finer details. Ella and I lived here for a few years before renovating the bungalow. While we stayed in a caravan on site for several months, the narrow corridors were knocked down making it more open plan, to accommodate Ella’s wheelchair.
Helping Ella with her physical and emotional development led me to inviting specialist therapists to stay at the farm to work closely with us. So we added a little wooden barrel hut, converted a room in the house for guests and offered B&B accommodation to support us financially. Ella’s friends and their parents or carers would also come for these sessions, and we opened our doors to the public for the first time in 2010, running short, intensive physical therapy courses for families who stayed at the Farm.
To strengthen my own mental health as a single mom, I had re-started the mindfulness practice and energy healing modalities I’d dabbled with in my twenties. As Ella grew up, Ellasfield evolved and I started working more one-to-one with children who needed emotional support. In 2018, I used my savings to buy the Shepherd’s Hut and started offering bespoke, private retreats for solo travellers and small groups, and running other healing events, such as yoga sessions, sound baths and cacao ceremonies.
I had bought a little pony for Ella as soon as we moved here. For a short while she enjoyed riding but increasing physical pain made it more challenging. By then, I had rescued a couple more ponies and two pigs, Tiggy and Winkle, two goats and several cats and dogs. They became a much-loved part of what guests enjoyed while they stayed at Ellasfield. The horses are now part of the equine-assisted therapy I do here, which I am expanding this year (and will write more about in a later blog).
Initially, there was a swimming pool but it became too expensive to run, used too many chemicals and no-one really liked going in it. So, with all the excitement around cold water therapy and a desire to provide a landscape that supported wildlife, we decided to convert the pool into a natural swimming pond in 2019. This coupled with the sauna is a big draw for people wanting spa facilities in a natural setting.
Now, we’re changing things again as Ella leaves college and wants to live independently, although still on site in what was the yoga and ceremony studio. To financially support this next stage in her life, we are expanding the holiday let side of the business. We’re going to renovate the house with sustainability at the heart of it, to create a beautiful interior that reflects our personality and where folks will feel at home with all the major comforts that our clients expect. We will reuse, repurpose and refurbish what we can and create spaces that will improve with age.
When we have house-guests, from 2025, the rest of the family (my partner Lee and our son) will live in a combination of the little hut and the beautiful yurt we recently got from Yurt For Life in Devon, which is also our teaching and ceremonial space. It’s so warm and cosy, with a wonderful wood burner in the centre, but living in a small space will take some adjustment. At the moment, we are preparing to downsize everything, letting go of many of our possessions, ready to enter the next phase of our family life.
Even the horses have a new home this year as we have created a ‘Paradise Paddock’ for them to roam in a more natural way. This is a grassy track around the whole perimeter of all the paddocks, so they can wander and graze similar to how they would in the wild where they actually travel miles together, eating from the hedgerows all spring and summer. I’m excited to see them enjoying it soon.
