Chettle Estate

A small village in North Dorset with regenerative ideologies that puts community, nature & resilience before profit. Home to The Castleman (restaurant with rooms) & Chettle Village Store. The village of Chettle is a special place; it is small but with an extremely strong sense of community, full of young families who live and work locally. The owner, Alice Favre, is a keen environmentalist who would like to create an abundant landscape that is fit for the environmental and social challenges that are increasingly facing us. It is becoming a beacon for people who can see that our current way of life is harming the natural world and who want to live and work differently. We like to collaborate with friendly, innovative and respectful people who are committed to finding brave This 100 person community called Chettle boasts a well-respected restaurant with rooms, The Castleman, one of the few thriving village shops, a campsite and one of the biggest (and craziest) village fetes in the UK. The 33 dwellings are currently rented out at around 40% of market value but are still maintained to a high standard. To live there it must be your primary home where you spend the majority of your time, so unlike many small villages, full of weekend-only dwellers, driving up property prices and leaving the villages empty during the week, it is a thriving community. The estate has just been given national heritage status by Natural England and HMRC so that it can remain in private hands and be conserved and protected for the benefit of the public. We are in the process of turning the farmland organic (with the help of the tenant farmers) and growing food for human consumption. This local, organic produce will be sold in the shop, a new café and the existing restaurant. 2022 will see us embark on a community-owned Food Hub where we will expand the shop, open a new cafe and join them both to a mixed agroecological farm to try and help reconnect people with the food they buy and eat.