Commissioned by Elizabeth Rogers, ‘Goodbye Badsell’ is an account of life at Badsell Park Farm in Kent from the 1960’s to the late 1990’s. 

The following is an extract from the introduction to the book, which is scheduled for a launch in May 2024

From the mid 1960’s through to the late 1990’s Badsell was an arable farm, as it is now, but it was also a rare breeds park or petting zoo, a fruit and vegetable farm, and a pick-your-own farm with a farm shop. It had a café and a gift shop, a nature trail, and you could take a tractor and trailer ride or, if you preferred, a carriage ride, courtesy of a heavy horse called Lady Eleanor. There were riding stables and pony and donkey rides, a butterfly house and Trinidadian leaf cutter ant house. For a while there was a large purpose-built mouse mansion complete with mouse portraits on the walls and a spit over the kitchen fire on which a fake leg of lamb was turned by a mouse wheel. There were pigs that lived at Badsell that are still spoken of today – their pictures kept in albums by people who loved them. There were events ranging from dog shows and pet shows to Guy Fawkes Nights. From an Andean Festival, at which the ambassadors of various South American nations nearly came to blows, to a Cowboy-themed birthday party during which a barroom brawl was staged with real stunt men. It was a place where people didn’t just live and work, but where people from wildly different backgrounds were thrown together to form a loose community and almost overwhelmingly happy memories.

But all of that was slipping away. 

One day I found a message on my answer machine from an old family friend called Elizabeth Rogers. Known to us as ‘Lizzie’ she was my mother’s best friend in childhood, a Polish refugee who came to London to escape the horrors of the 2nd World War. She now lives in New York.

“Adam I’m going to commission you,” she said, in her American twang, “I want you to write a book about Badsell Park Farm.”

Goodbye Badsell is a subjective account but I have also reached out to other people for whom it was a special place and many have generously given me their time to tell me their Badsell stories. What has struck me is just how special ‘the farm’ was to people. More than one described their years there as the best and happiest of their lives. There are many more people who will feel that they too should have been asked but I have had to draw the line somewhere.

What I hope is that this book captures the spirit of Badsell Park Farm during a specific time. It is, I admit, an eccentric book – a hodgepodge of personal memories, anecdotes, descriptions of people, places and events, thrown together in an occasionally not entirely logical manner. It probably would have made sense to put all the near-fatal accidents caused by the Honda three-wheeler in one chapter – but then again that might have become monotonous.

My best hope is that this book is a bit like Badsell was itself in those years – chaotic but charming.