Inception
Butser Ancient Farm was created to research Prehistoric & Roman Agriculture and Building Techniques through experimentation. The original proposal was made by the Council for British Archaeology in 1970. Two years later, in 1972 the late Dr Peter Reynolds was recruited as its founding Director. It was initially located on the site of a Bronze and Iron Age farmstead on a northerly spur of Butser Hill.
The remit Dr Reynolds was given included making Farm self-sufficient within that three years. As part of that he set up the Friends of Butser Ancient Farm almost immediately.
One of the first aerial views of Little Butser, in 1974. It shows the barrel shaped profile of this inhospitable spur. Several roundhouses can be seen at various stages of development, as Peter was starting to explore the effect of size on the constructs' design.
This picture shows some of the earliest experimental techniques in operation. Two Dexter cattle are being used to pull an ard plough. It can take up to two years to train a pair matched in size, power and application. This is Jack Langley, Peter's first "right-hand" man.
The Balksbury House. The junction of the porch with the main conical roof is always a compromise between the slope of the thatch on the cone and that on the porch. In this case the porch had far too shallow an angle and this was one factor which led to the failure pictured above, leading to the house being dismantled.
In 1984, a very young Ben Affleck visited Butser Ancient Farm as part of an American educational TV programme called 'The Second Voyage of the Mimi'.