About Manor Farm

The Matthews Family have been farming in Surrey since 1935 when they moved here from a dairy farm in Kent. At that time the family had one landlord and a tenancy of 350 acres.



Fred Matthews and his son Laurence are partners in the business and Fred is now retired.  Laurence and Paula Matthews have 3 sons who all show an interest in farming.

Laurence began a major restructuring of the farm business in 1989, rationalising the farm and updating equipment.

The farm now extends to 2,900 acres of owned and tenanted land with ten landlords and five employees. Laurence is Chairman of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Combinable Crops Board, this board of working farmers advises on arable policy and lobbies the Government and the EU. He is on the council of the Surrey Agricultural Society and is a steward at ploughing matches and the Surrey County Show. Laurence is a founding member of Surrey Quality Producers Group.

Paula trained in Countryside Recreation, working as a countryside ranger for a local authority, National Trust warden, District Rights of Way Officer and then Senior Rights of Way Officer. For ten years Paula was a director of Countryside Venture a National charity which provided bursaries for training courses in practical rural skills.

Paula has been photographing farming activities at Manor Farm for the past few years and has used the pictures when building this website. In 2007 Paula established a framework for educational visits, having achieved full accreditation for Manor Farm to host school visits. Since then she has produced a variety of interpretive material for the farm and has hosted visits from local and inner city schools.