Film sets and festivals: St Clere takes centre stage

How many CLA officers- or members - have a sofa suspended 30ft high in a tree, in ancient woodland that has doubled up as Russia and Sweden for a hit TV series? For CLA Vice President Eliza Ecclestone, it's part of the diversification journey that the St Clere Estate has been on since she took the helm in 2010.

Eliza is managing trustee of the 3,000-acre estate near Sevenoaks in Kent, combining filming, events and festivals, in-house forestry, an arable contract farming partnership, and residential and commercial property.

For the last 11 years St Clere has hosted Camp Wildfire, a summer camp for adults, which has grown from a few hundred attendees to 10,000 across three weekends.

Guests can 'adventure by day, party by night', with 100 activities offered - from high-adrenaline tree-top adventures and survival skills to arts, crafts and relaxation. There is also live music, DJs, talks, dancing, games and comedy, and the festival has a reputation for being LGBTQ+- friendly.

A family-friendly version, Camp Kindling, started in 2021, and the operation now employs 12 people full-time and 600 over festival dates.

"I'm proud of how it's grown," says Eliza. "It's wholesome fun and Camp Kindling is particularly special, as it's a chance for whole families to play together outdoors."

St Clere is a popular filming location, and has been used for shows and adverts from The Great starring Nicholas Hoult and Gillian Anderson – when some scenes were meant to depict Russia and Sweden, and featured a CGI bear – to clothing giant Primark. It has opened a dog walking field and also hosted sporting and endurance events.

The estate turns 400 in 2030 and aims to be a leader in environmental management. It is planting 60,000 trees and, after years in Higher Level Stewardship and SFI, Eliza has noticed positive change. “You can really see the results,” she says. “I now get bugs on the car windscreen again, which hasn’t been the case since I was a child, so nature restoration is working.

“The thought of the SFI budget being capped and squeezed is tough when on the ground you can see it’s leading to a lot of the good work to improve biodiversity being undone.”

Eliza, who is also chair of the board of trustees at Chevening House and Estate, the grace and favour home of the Foreign Secretary, has been recognised with a British Empire Medal for services to the community. She was recognised for launching the Care for our Community initiative during lockdown, and has also led anti-litter campaign CleanUp for our Community, Care for Ukraine supporting refugee families and a community broadband scheme.

It is this community involvement that Eliza feels is key to St Clere. Asked what she has learnt since taking over from her parents Ronald and Georgia, Eliza says: “A major lesson has been not to assume that people trust the estate. I realised you constantly need to work to earn that trust.

“The community work has been really positive and shows we’re invested for the long term.”

At the same time, the pressure on land use is greater than ever. Eliza says: “The countryside will have to do even more in the future, whether that’s energy, housing, infrastructure, data centres, flood management, tourism.

“You can’t please everyone all of the time, so in the end you have to do what you believe is right.”

Eliza has now been Vice President of the CLA for a year, the halfway point for the role. After 12 months of touring the country attending AGMs and shows, and a busy schedule of meetings and representing members, what has she observed?

“CLA members are some of most inspiring business leaders in the country. It’s a hard time to be in any sort of business, but our rural businesses have extra challenges around infrastructure, lack of connectivity, transport and the weather, as well as policy challenges such as inheritance tax.

“Despite everything, there’s such a desire to run thriving businesses and solve some of the problems the nation faces. So often our members are ahead of the government and everyone else in terms of coming up with solutions that can make a real difference.

“Every step I’ve taken at the CLA I’ve been more and more impressed by the team and their problem solving and drive to make a difference in a way I haven’t experienced in any other organisation.

“They are the right group of people to represent rural businesses at this critical moment.”