W OLD Cottage farm near Driffield, East Yorkshire, is a mixture of sheep, suckler cows and arable. The farm diversification providing high-quality holiday accommodation is now every bit as important as the farm itself.

Cottage is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to the magnificent house described as a Georgian City Gentleman’s retreat.

There are six beautifully restored holiday rooms, all of them named after people who have lived at Wold Cottage in the past 250 years.

This magnificent farmhouse is very different to the state that it was in back in 1989 when Derek Gray and his wife first bought it “It was a bit rough. It leaked – on a wet day you got wet inside,”

said Derek. “We put 22 new windows in and a new roof. Every slate came off and was put back in the same place.”

It took five years to raise the money for the repairs, as well as getting the necessary planning permissions for the grade II-listed building. The work itself then took 11 months.

When the Grays bought Wold Cottage, it was a working farm. It has 300 acres of arable on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, near Driffield. Derek also has Texel/Suffolk cross sheep, and 20 suckler cows.

He said: “They are Suffolk cross ewes to a Texel ram. We sell half of them now, but I’ll over-winter the rest and sell them March or April time.”

The beef cattle are Belgian Bluedairy cross heifers, bred with an Aberdeen Angus bull to give Aberdeen Angus beef which sells for a premium.

“It’s more like the farms on The Wolds used to be when I was younger,” said Derek.

“All the farms in Wold Newton at one time had a flock of sheep.

Now there’s myself and another chap in the village who have sheep and that’s it.

“The Wolds is good for arable. It grows fantastic malting barley and good milling wheat and people have done that, which is the most profitable way.”

But almost 25 years on from buying the farm, the farming has now taken second place to the diversification, providing accommodation for tourists.

“Now we make our money with the B&B, more than we do with the farming,” said Derek. “The farming is just a hobby, it’s low pressure, at least it is until you get a year like this.”

The Grays first started providing accommodation for tourists in 1999, ten years after they bought the farm.

Katrina said: “The children were going to school, we had space and I wanted to do something with the house. I’ve got four rooms in the main house, two in the converted barn, and two self-catering cottages.”

Derek added: “When we moved here, farming was pretty good, it then went into recession. With the B&B, you obviously do what makes the most money, and we both enjoy doing the B&B.” Katrina said Derek helps with the serving – sometimes that means feeding the guests before the farm animals get their meals.

“They do shout if they have to wait to be fed,” she said, referring, of course, to the livestock rather than the guests.

Derek said that opening the farm up to guests has saved them from going under. “We couldn’t have done what we have done, if we hadn’t had the B&B,” he said.

One of the biggest attractions on the farm is a brick monument, which was erected in 1799 on the spot where Britain’s second largest recorded meteorite landed in a field a short distance from Wold Cottage, four years earlier.

It was erected by Sir Edward Topham, a local magistrate who lived in Wold Cottage at the time. Sir Edward related that the meteorite made a hole about a yard wide and almost two feet deep in the soil and chalky rock below it.

An inscription on the monument commemorates the event: Here on this spot, December 13, 1795, fell from the atmosphere an extraordinary stone. In depth twenty-eight inches, in length thirty-six inches, and whose weight was fiftysix pounds. This column in memory of it was erected by Edward Topham in 1799.

For many farmers the huge rainfalls of summer have caused big problems, but Wold Farm has been quite fortunate because of the type of land.

Derek said: “We’re on very light land, very-well drained land, and yield-wise we’ve done very well. I’d think we’re average, if not above average. In a way, the wet weather does suit us, but it makes life hard.

“But, we aren’t like the guys with the heavy land whose yields are down considerably because our crops haven’t been stood in water all summer.

“We’ve had a good harvest, but it’s been stop-start, which makes it hard work actually.”

The couple recently expanded the holiday business by turning over one of their fields to travelling caravans. Derek said they are providing minimal facilities to keep the pitch-rate down.

Wold Cottage was recently named Best Bed and Breakfast in Welcome to Yorkshire’s White Rose Awards.

Katrina said diversifying into tourism had proved a great success for the farm – it’s a route she’s glad they took.