COUNTY conservationists and members of the local farming community were jubilant this week after a 'gem' in Herefordshire's Golden Valley was saved from the plough.

Parts of a unique 16th century waterways system, flower-rich hayfields and old water meadows sweeping to the banks of the River Dore have been saved by a small trust led by 'One Man and His Dog' TV presenter Robin Page.

Mr Page, a farmer and writer, says his Cambridgeshire-based Countryside Restoration Trust has run up a huge overdraft to buy the 246-acre Turnastone Court farm - the price is understood to have been in the region of £1.2 million. He is appealing for help. The Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Rev. John Oliver, has agreed to become the patron of a £1.5 million appeal to get CRT out of the red and pay for repairs.

The estate includes a seven-bedroom stone farmhouse, barns, a cottage and the Turnastone village shop, a Herefordshire curiosity famed for its old signs and antique petrol pumps.

Former owner died

The farm, grazed for generations by pure-bred Hereford cattle and Clun Forest sheep, was long regarded as 'special' but its future as a conservation haven full of bird and insect life, rare grasses and plants, came under threat last year.

Alarm bells rang after the death in her nineties of Miss Irene Watkins, the last owner, whose family farmed the land by traditional methods for more than a century.

The farm was put on the market for offers in the region of £1 million. A prospective buyer, a potato grower, applied to DEFRA to plough some of the permanent pasture and local people feared that would be the farm's eventual fate.

Their concerns, first highlighted in The Hereford Times, were followed up in the Daily Telegraph by top environment writer Charles Clover, a friend of Prince Charles.

A local man, retired land surveyor Ian Hart of Newton St Margarets was already on the case and his persistence paid off.

Mr Hart and his wife Dilys, amateur botanists, made a study of plant species in the old Turnastone sward and knew just what could be lost. Mr Hart contacted CRT recently - after fruitless 'months on the telephone' trying to find a benign buyer - and he struck lucky.

This week Mr Hart was 'over the moon'. Another county farmer, David Powell of Much Marcle, gave his pasture farm, Awnells Farm, to the CRT in 2,000 to secure its future. It is likely that his closed herd of Hereford cattle will help re-stock Turnastone.

Vowchurch farmer Alan Layton, whose family is distantly related to the Watkins family, and whose father also farms locally, said the community was delighted that Turnastone Court had been saved. He was 'very happy' that the Herefords and Cluns would be returning and the ancient waterways system of Herefordshire pioneer Rowland Vaughan - including the 10-foot wide 'Trench Royal' - would remain undisturbed.

Robin Page said: "We would like to keep Turnastone as a working farm and bring in a family that would work with our aims in mind - to protect the land and its wildlife. We would want to maintain Herefordshire farming traditions - by both breeding Hereford cattle and increasing the size of Turnastone's existing orchards."

He hoped a volunteer group could be set up to monitor wildlife and help repair some of the buildings. There would be an open day in the summer.