Muker

In a period of rapid change in rural England, farmer and writer James Rebanks explores the lives of rural workers in and around three English villages.

Un-nostalgic and unpatronising, these are the uncensored voices of rural England - by turns thoughtful and funny, defiant and melancholy. As forces including land ownership, government policy, climate change, globalisation, rewilding and food production monopolies alter rural England forever, James explores the impact of these changes on the collective lives and cultures of communities and offers a portrait of their inner lives.

We hear from foresters and farmers, a deer stalker and a regenerative market gardener, a bellringer, a gamekeeper and a retired vicar. Men and women from 23 to 90 years old. What are their pre-occupations, their memories, their desires for the future and what do they think is happening to the worlds they live in?

In this first episode, we hear from people living in and around the north Yorkshire villages of Muker and Keld. This is a centre of hill farming and Swaledale sheep breeding. A proud, living farming community feels increasingly threatened by economic changes and environmental policy. In a place which has often held itself apart from the outside world, mass tourism, second homes and retirees from towns and cities are increasingly offering a vision of a very different future. What would it mean for nobody to farm these hills?

Produced by Michael Umney.
Executive Producer: Susan Marling
Mixed by Mike Wooley
Original Music by Toby Hay
Special thanks to Christine Clarkson
Michael Umney was supported by a Churchill Fellowship, awarded in 2025
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4