History

We are proud to be the 4th 5th and 6th generation to live on Peasland Farm. In the past the farm had been a successful small holding, farming cattle, pigs and chickens. In more recent years it became an arable farm producing barley and sugar beet. The farm had not been viable in recent years so it’s now just our family home. The fields were turned into paddocks for horses to graze and chickens to roam around on.  In 2017 we decided to put in an application to house a converted horse lorry.

Once the planning permission was granted we went about finding a suitable base lorry to work on. We knew we wanted something vintage and something we could breathe life back into. Having been hunting for a horse lorry whilst waiting for planning permission to be granted we were delighted when we mentioned this to an old Romany gypsy friend and he said he had the perfect wagon. We fell instantly in love with the lorry and were quick to name it after its previous owner before we started the work. 

At this time Tori was working full time as a deputy manager of a care home and I was working running my live sound company working in the live entertainment industry. With a growing family, we found it hard to find the time and finance to make steady progress on the Lorry. However we went about restoring the original wood panelling and using sand blasting and tracing, we were able to get the lorry looking as it would have done originally with its pin stripe décor. Once we felt we had made good the body and fibre glass roof we started work on the floor. We were less than excited to find the entire metal floor was rotten through. With this disappointing discovery, we went about removing the entire floor with our good friend and blacksmith Leon. There were many times where we felt like we had bitten off more than we could chew, this was definitley one of them. Digging deep we managed to get past this and the floor fully rebuilt. At this point another good friend Sam from joined us to make our toilet and shower units with us.

Cue a global pandemic.

We had to close the doors to the warehouse of the audio company as all the music venues and festival we work for had also shut their doors. This is an entirely different story, but one that we are proud to be able to say now that we pulled through

After trying to have a normal job for a few months it became apparent that we really needed to put all of our efforts into a project that could see us through this pandemic.

May 2020 fortunate enough to be able to isolate and work on site we started full time and then some working on finishing the units off. When restrictions allowed we were able to start work on the site itself. With so many of our work colleagues from the music industry out of work we had a readymade established hard-working team. We worked late nights and long hours. This way of working enabled us to finish the site off and open by late august 2020. We were so incredibly lucky to have such good friends and family help us out along the way, something we will be forever grateful for.

November 2020. We were banking on being able to go back to work instead we had to close the glamping site when we went into a local, followed by national, lockdown. We then decided to put in planning permission for another unit and make a real go of making the site work for us. We rescued Dixie from a couple in Suffolk. The lorry itself was in desperate need of TLC and a new roof. Luckily planning permission was granted and we set to the task of making Dixie into what she is today, somewhere between a treehouse and cottage.

June 2022, we have finally finished our glamping site. We will continue to develop the site’s structures and diversity but do not plan to add any more units and take away from the privacy. We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved and recognise the luck we have with having such support from friends and family through what was a very challenging time. We are now looking forward to sharing the space with you.