Minstead Study Centre is a beautiful and inspirational learning environment, located in the heart of the New Forest.  Our primary purpose is to engage primary school children in learning about how we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, adopt more sustainable lifestyles and be guardians of the planet’s future. 

The Centre has been running successfully for over 50 years and has welcomed over 100,00 children to come and stay and learn about the natural world. Primary schools from all over the south of England send classes from years 2 to year 6 on short residential courses, accompanied by school staff.  The families pay a modest sum for their children to attend and we endeavour to keep costs to a minimum in order that prices are affordable to families across the whole social spectrum.

Our programmes provide a core of science and geography studies, delivered in an exciting and innovative manner, reaching into art, drama, music, religion and history; all activities are linked to curriculum needs.   We have a 7 acre site which provides a wonderful environment for many of our activities and we also take the children out into the New Forest to provide a wider backdrop to their learning.                                                                              

The Centre also hosts a wide variety of courses for the local community.  Our community programme includes workshops on organic gardening, fruit pruning, keeping chickens, willow working, bread making and printmaking to name but a few!

For more information about Minstead Study Centre and its programmes for schools and community, please visit their website here: 

The Friends of Minstead Study Centre is a registered charity set up to support the work of the Minstead Study Centre.  We help to secure funding for the Centre through grants, sponsorship, donations and events. 

All money raised goes to the Centre to pay for improvements to the site, classroom and accommodation and to give a greater number of people the opportunity to access the wonderful facilities.

Replacing the Roundhouse!

In the late 1990s, with the help of children and volunteers, we built a fabulous roundhouse here at Minstead Study Centre. The walls are made with mud and clay from our pond, the timbers that support the structure and the roof are locally sourced and the roof is thatched.

Here’s how it looked when it was first built:

Over the last 20 something years, thousands of children have spent time in the roundhouse - enjoying stories and singing round the campfire - toasting marshmallows and cooking up hot chocolate. It is a wonderful space which is used all year round. Warm and toasty in winter (with the fire lit) and cool and shady in the summer.

But…. thatch and mud don’t last forever and the beautiful building you see in this picture came to the end of its life. Below is a picture of how the roundhouse was looking by 2019….

We set up a funding campaign to start the rebuild of the roundhouse and to date have raised £7,600 towards the rebuild costs with generous donations from Harriet’s Trust and the Beaulieu Beaufort Foundation. With this amount, we were able to commission a new roundhouse, which was built over the summer and autumn of 2020.

The old roundhouse was duly demolished, and Anthony Brown of Conygar Coppice, the master roundhouse builder, was able to save and reuse many of the original timbers and much of the mud from the old building. Between April and October, a dedicated team of volunteers came to help - particularly with daubing the walls, and the new roundhouse took shape.

This is our beautiful new, finished roundhouse - ready to welcome visitors in 2021! We still need to raise around £4,000 to cover the costs of the rebuild so any donations would be very welcome.

The Big Grow is a multi-faceted project which has an inspirational, highly productive fruit and vegetable garden as its centrepiece. 

This garden is located at the Study Centre and visited by 2,500 primary school children every year who come to learn about their impact on the earth and how they can live more sustainably.  As well as providing fresh produce for the visiting children, the garden is used to teach children, volunteers and members of the local community about how to grow seasonal organic food. To extend the impact of the project we will;

• work with local schools to establish educational, vegetable gardens on their sites and

• run courses at the Study Centre for the local community

The project is growing! Now we want to reach out to schools to help them establish school gardens

In 2018 we appointed Adam, our Head Gardener. He and his team of volunteers developed the fruit and vegetable garden from a humble veggie patch into the amazing, productive garden that is there for all at the Study Centre to enjoy. The garden has surpassed all expectations in terms of productivity, diversity and beauty! Our next phase involves outreach work with local schools whereby members of the Study Centre team will help schools to establish thriving and productive produce patches of their own. We have already run courses here at the Centre for teachers, to help them plan and prepare for setting up a school garden and now the Minstead team are ready to go out and provide tailored support and advice to individual schools. We have some initial funding for this work (seed funding!) but with more funds, we can work more schools! Click on the “donate now” button to help us - all donations, large and small, are very gratefully received.

We’ve raised over £40,000 to make this project happen but we need more funding to make sure the project can continue - can you help? 

Click below to see how you can support us