Meet our president

Charles Martell

As a young man Charles came to Gloucestershire to work at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust Slimbridge. Whilst there he went on a number of expeditions, from Svalbard in the north to the Falkland Islands in the south and many countries in between. In those far flung reaches of the world,  he was keenly aware of the local distinctiveness he encountered and deplored the encroachment of the homogenised modern world with its negative impact on native inhabitants. He decided to conserve his own little bit of rural England in Gloucestershire. Over the past 50 years he and his family have been milking their critically rare Old Gloucester cows, making Gloucestershire cheese (the famous Stinking Bishop cheese), restoring vernacular farm buildings and distilling cider brandy from their orchards.