Furnace Brook CIC

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Furnace Brook CIC supports rural microenterprises, land art and ecosystem restoration on a 60 acre farm in the East Sussex High Weald 🌱
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24/09/2026

This morning, The Guardian published an article on the upstream waste dumping, that caused the pollution of our lake at furnace brook, the devastating loss of life in the water, and what we are doing about it. Read the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/24/furnace-book-east-sussex-fishing-lake

Naturally it has been a heartbreaking experience. But in the face of pollution, we are continuing to work towards a solution.

We are determined to turn this moment into an opportunity to test and develop practical models for community-led water restoration. Together with Kiki, and other restoration experts, we are implementing nature-based solutions to help clean the water and bring life back to this watercourse.

We have launched a crowdfunder to support this work: restoring the watercourse, documenting what we learn, and creating a practical playbook that other communities can use in responding to water pollution.

Please share, and if you can, contribute to our crowdfunder: https://communitiesfund.avivafoundation.org.uk/p/water-restoration #
Let’s show what community-led restoration can do!

Thank you to Steve Rose for the care and thorough research behind this article, and to John D Liu for his continued support and advice.

Ecosystem Restoration Communities

Furnace Brook in East Sussex was home to carp, tench, bream, roach and trout – and 15 trailer-loads had to be buried. The mystery led to a neighbouring farm, and a story of waste, pollution and dirty rivers that reveals a lot about Britain today

03/09/2026

Help us restore Furnace Brook

A pollution incident from an upstream farm landfill site devastated the aquatic life along the course of a woodland stream and a previously highly biodiverse 6 acre lake. Help us restore the water!

For a place built around restoring nature, growing food and bringing people together, it was a huge blow.

But we’re choosing to turn that damage into an opportunity to learn, restore and share what we discover.

We’ve launched a Crowdfunder to raise £50,000 to restore the lake and create an open-source model for ecological restoration. The knowledge, methods and lessons we develop at Furnace Brook can help other communities facing similar challenges.

Upon launching, we’ve immediately raised over £5,000 more than 10% of our target!

Now we’re opening it up to our wider community.

Every contribution helps us move closer to restoring a thriving aquatic ecosystem and building a place where restoration can be experienced, tested, learned and shared.

We're restoring one lake.
But the lessons could reach much further.

If you believe in giving damaged ecosystems a chance to recover, please support the campaign and share it with someone who might care.

Help us turn pollution into restoration.

👉 https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/water-restoration

27/05/2026

Ever wondered what it’s like to live like a beaver? 🪵🦦 Now’s your chance to find out and help us build a beaver lodge!

We are incredibly excited to team up for a special community volunteer day at Furnace Brook. Together, we’re going to build a life-sized, human-scale beaver lodge right by the lake! 🌊

Once it's finished, this will be an amazing educational space that you can actually climb inside to experience a day in the life of one of nature’s greatest engineers.

Whether you want to stay for an hour or the whole day, we’d love your help to bring this unique habitat to life. It’s a perfect, fun day out for the whole family!

We're starting at 10am on June 13th.
Sign up here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/build-a-beaver-lodge-tickets-1989390745272?aff=ebdsshcopyurl&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing

16/05/2026

A lovely community volunteer day yesterday in the veg patch.

We made a new no-dig bed and planted out some seedlings together in the sunshine before enjoying a lunch together and a nice cup of tea.

Our next volunteer day next month will be the creation of a beaver lodge. More on that next week...

Fancy joining in the fun?

05/05/2026

We’ve been letting this batch of biochar from a recent kiln run sit out in the rain to weather and charge. It turns out, it’s already the perfect home for these sprouts!

If you look at that root, you can see exactly why biochar is a garden game-changer. The roots aren't just touching the char, they are physically weaving into those microscopic pores to grab water and nutrients on demand.

The deep green color indicates that even a little rain-weathering can turn raw carbon into a biological battery for your plants.

Not only are we growing stronger plants, but we're also locking carbon into the soil for the long haul.

24/04/2026

Our upcoming events here on the farm and by the lake.

Come for a farm tour, a drink, a sing, some community gardening, or a quiz night.

Also coming up are film screenings, music nights, talks on soil.

13/04/2026

A small device with a big role in understanding what’s really happening on the farm.

Here, is installing a bioacoustic monitor that will stay with us over the next month, quietly listening to the landscape and capturing the presence of birds and bats as indicators of ecological health.

This was set up with the help of from and our following this afternoon's move of our mob-grazing goats across the field below.

It’s a nice moment of overlap between action and observation. Grazing to shape the system, and listening to understand how it responds.

So much of rewilding is about tuning back in. Not just changing what we do, but paying closer attention to what returns.

It’ll be fascinating to see what we hear and how this changes year on year.

03/04/2026

We’re excited to be taking a meaningful step forward on the farm this season.

With thanks to , we have trees arriving from to establish nearly 200 metres of new hedgerow, as well as 120 walnut and hazel trees going into the , marking the beginning of our agroforestry work. These small, practical changes are part of a longer-term effort to build resilience into the land while increasing biodiversity AND productivity.

If you’d like to be part of it, you can register for free via our Eventbrite, where you’ll also find tickets for upcoming farm tours and open taproom afternoons throughout the rest of the year.

We’re always glad to connect with others who are interested in supporting or following along with this kind of work.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1986625971760?aff=oddtdtcreator

Address

Trolliloes Lane, Trolliloes
Hailsham
BN274QR

Telephone

+441435830835

Website

http://www.furnacebrook.org.uk/

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