The Harewood Food & Drink Project is spearheading the estate’s transformation into a lifestyle destination. We spoke to Eddy Lascelles to find out more.

Like many traditional English country estates, Harewood has had to diversify and adapt to a changing climate – and is thriving as a result. 

The 4,500-acre estate, on the outskirts of Leeds and in easy reach of Harrogate, has evolved into a forward-thinking lifestyle destination that offers much more than house and garden visits – although both are well worth a look if you’re visiting the area. 

Harewood dates back to the mid-18th century when it was built for Edwin Lascelles, the First Baron of Harewood. To this day, the estate remains in the Lascelles family and is home to the current Earl, David Lascelles, who brought his sons – Eddy and Ben – on board to drive diversification over the last ten years. 

At the heart of this expansion is the Harewood Food & Drink Project (HF&DP), which was set up in 2016 to showcase the amazing produce grown on the estate. Harewood’s history of food production goes back hundreds of years with fruits, vegetables and wild foraged foods abundant across every corner, as well as also being home to Hebridean black sheep, Highland Cattle and Aberdeen Angus, and red and fallow deer.

The spectacular Grade I listed walled garden at Harewood was built in the 1750s whilst Harewood House was still under construction, so that there was a fully operational kitchen garden ready for when the grand house was completed. In the early 19th century double-insulated walls – similar to a central heating system – were installed which created a warm, tropical climate to grow the most exotic of fruits. Items like mangoes, passion fruits, sugar cane and even pineapples were all grown here, in Yorkshire, in the 1800s.

Present day Harewood, still uses traditional growing methods, everything is hand-picked and hand-tended to with no pesticides used, just as nature intended.

In addition to homegrown or home-reared produce, Harewood also produce their own honey, gin (with Whittaker’s Gin) and beer (with Northern Monk).

Visitors and guests can access this fine produce in myriad ways, either through a series of pop-up fine dining events, which are held throughout the year; the Muddy Boots café in Harewood village; or at The Hovels, a dedicated wedding and events venue.

“In the last ten years Ben and I have really been focused on diversifying the offer that we have – the HF&DP was a significant part of that,” said Eddy Lascelles. “We want to utilise as much estate-sourced produce as we possibly can, it’s there to celebrate and champion Harewood.”

The Harewood Food & Drink Project is perhaps best known for its fine dining events, which are often far from conventional, but are always based around what’s in season and what they can source themselves.

“Our flagship event is called Hidden Harewood, which we do every summer and is really fun,” explained Eddy. “It’s a bit like a magical mystery tour, a literal and metaphorical journey through the estate where we move people between different locations and they have courses and drinks in each place.

“Whether people love it or hate it, as long as it’s unique and they say it’s unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before, that’s what we aim for.”

The estate has worked with a series of guest chefs over the last three years or so who have tended to be from a Michelin background, but they do also have a permanent team, led by head chef Will Campbell. 

In contrast to the fine dining events is the Muddy Boots café, which is very much a place for all and is extremely popular with walkers, hence the name. The estate took over the village café in July 2018, which then underwent a comprehensive refurbishment in March 2019. It’s very much about good quality, good value and simple, locally-sourced home-cooked food, all day every day.

“It’s become a bit of a local institution and we’re now seeing a much wider pool of people coming here,” added Eddy. “What we’ve tried to create is an environment that’s warm and welcoming. We do things properly but it’s simple fare.”

As well as the seven-days-a week offering, the Muddy Boots Café also hosts bistro nights three or four times a month, which further showcases the estate’s fine produce.

The Hovels at Harewood was launched as a wedding venue in 2022 and is a Grade II listed stable block surrounded by unspoilt Yorkshire countryside. It serves as the main wedding and events venue and has capacity for 80 seated diners or 120 standing guests. As well as being the location for many of the pop-up fine dining events, it can also be used as a private hire venue for everything from birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs to corporate events and conferences.

In-keeping with the estate’s ethos, menus are designed to give you maximum flexibility and use the best of local seasonal produce, wherever possible sourced from Harewood.

“We’re not a ‘conveyor belt’ wedding venue, if people are looking for the smaller, more intimate, bespoke, food-led wedding, that tends to be us,” said Eddy.

One recent further change has been the addition of a small farm shop, which is based in the estate office, and the HFDP has also started making their own frozen ready meals, available at the farm shop or the Muddy Boots café.

Although growing up in a little village in Somerset, Eddy made regular visits to the family estate and has always had a fondness for Yorkshire and the outdoors. After working in London, Eddy moved here with his wife Sophie around ten years ago, bringing a passion for food and a desire to make Harewood into a high-end lifestyle destination. 

“It’s like the world’s biggest playground, we were very lucky, it’s paradise when you’re a kid,” said Eddy of his childhood at Harewood. “It’s only when you grow up and you’re working in it day in, day out that you realise what a hard slog it is to keep it looking and functioning like this. 

“It’s a duty and a responsibility to ensure that my kids and grandkids have the same opportunity that we did growing up. To do that and to create a model which is done with the right kind of ethics behind it is really important to us as a family.

“We work in hospitality, not an easy industry to work in. It certainly doesn’t get easier, it gets harder for so many reasons, but it’s something that we’re all just really passionate about and feel very lucky to be able to do what we do. The fact is that at Harewood, there’s an expectation of standards that we’re responsible for upholding, but equally you can have a bit of fun with that.”

And whilst Eddy may be very much a foodie obsessive, his brother Ben is very much conservation-focused. 

“We talk a lot about conservation and sustainability here and almost every decision we make is influenced by minimising the impact on the landscape, of how we can leave the land in a better place than we found it,” added Eddy.

Current ongoing work includes a landscape scale restoration project designed to sustainably manage and restore ecosystems including arable and livestock farmland, woodlands and waterways, that will make a lasting contribution to national efforts to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Much progress has been made to decarbonise and make Harewood more sustainable. As well as switching most machinery and equipment to electric, renewable energy schemes include solar and biomass plants.

Plants provide heat to all the estate’s commercial office spaces, residential properties and holiday cottages and even heat Harewood House and the Courtyard, saving more than 500 tonnes of CO2 per year.

The brothers appear to be doing everything the right way and reaping the rewards. The appeal of Harewood now stretches much further than it ever has done before, and visitor numbers are only expected to grow, whether you’re a house visitor, diner or wedding guest. The legacy of the estate is in safe hands. 

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