Rothamsted Experimental Station

Abstract

ROTHAMSTED must surely have appeared to most of its scientific visitors as the embodiment of stability, and it has come as a great shock to learn that its historic fields are threatened by the builder. When Lawes in 1889 set up the trust that governs the Station, he did not give the classical experimental fields or the land on which the laboratories stand, but only the use of them for a period of years. After his death it was found impossible to work the experiments without taking on the Home Farm from the family trustees, and this was done in 1911; but some of the highly important fields were let to Rothamsted on a six-monthly arrangement only. Even so, the farm remained awkward and difficult to work, being split into three separate pieces, easy access to which was possible only by courtesy of the estate and the tenant. With the encroachment of the builder a new situation has arisen. The family is proposing to give up possession and to put the whole estate into the market. The situation has been closely examined by the Lawes Agricultural Trust Committee in consultation with the staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, and the conclusion has been reached that Rothamsted must own the land on which it is working. An appeal for £30,000 has therefore been issued over the signatures of an influential group including the Duke of Devonshire; the presidents of the Royal Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, and the National Farmers Union; Lord Clinton, the chairman of the Rothamsted Committee; Sir Daniel Hall, the late director and Sir John Russell, the present director of Rothamsted.