Stockeld Park: The Yorkshire family attraction owned by four generations that started as a Christmas tree farm and developed into a winter wonderland

Robert John Foster, the great-grandfather of the current owner, bought the estate at Stockeld in 1870. At the time he made his money in textiles and the business was called John Fosters and Sons.

Peter Grant took over the management of the business in 1981 - which was a livestock farm at the time - and had the idea of selling Christmas trees as they had always grown trees in the woodland.

They started selling them on a commercial scale and took out 12 acres out of their production. This continued for the next 25 years before they diversified the business.

“I was one of the pioneers to plant what was known as the Nordon fir which became the main non-needle drop tree,” Mr Grant said.

“We effectively started selling wholesale and we developed a big business and we also had our retail side.

“We worked out quite quickly there was a big difference between selling something retail and selling something wholesale.

“We reached a plateau with the retail, so we thought we needed something else to attract people to come and buy their tree.”

Mr Grant’s wife, Susie, joined the business in 2006 when it expanded with an indoor riding school and other features were added.

“We bought a plastic ice rink, and we set up a shop called The Christmas Adventure,” Mr Grant said.

“We’d normally get about 5,000-6,000 people coming to buy their Christmas trees, but to our absolute amazement in 2006 within six weeks, 22,000 people [visited].

“From there, we thought what else can we do; in 2007 we had our three sons at home at that time, they helped us.

“We were really the pioneers of doing illuminations, so we created this illuminated trail.

“At the same time, we bought special carpets and created a Nordic ski track; so you could either walk around and see the lights or ski around. That caught people’s imaginations.”

Visitor numbers increased to 65,000 in 2007 and the adventure park expanded further.

“We decided to create a maze,” Mr Grant said.

“We got a gentleman called Adrian Fisher who designed us this big snowflake maze and we moved about 2,500 trees in 10 days. That became very popular and it just became a huge rolling ball.

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“We didn’t really have a business plan at all. The trees became a sideline and almost by chance created this tourist attraction.”

Peter and Susie’s childhoods spending quality time with their parents inspired them to create the varied features of the park.

“Susie and I are very creative people and we like ideas. We like trying to do our own thing,” he said.

“We particularly didn’t go and look at anybody else’s efforts because we wanted to remain unique to ourselves.

“What has driven us is that we wanted to create a world in which people would like to exist again; where children can actually be children. We don’t have screens or electronics, it’s children and parents playing together.

“I think today parents are so busy; I remember once or twice, my parents would put up a tent in the garden so they could sleep in the tent at night.

“As a small child, how exciting it was for mum and dad and doing something with them, so we wanted to recreate that feeling to some extent. We have been successful in that.”

In 2013, they decided to make the attraction alluring during the summer months as well as winter.

“It was difficult to get a good number of people and hold on to them if you were just doing something in the winter,” he said.

“We moved on to what we called a ‘Summer Adventure’ where we created, within our Enchanted Forest, a number of theme playgrounds.

“Everything we do we make ourselves and we always create a theme to it. We try to create magic for people. Our strapline used to be: Where magic is made and adventures begin.

“In 2022 we opened our indoor play area called the Play Hive which we designed over Covid.

“We had a very talented girl, who was only 23 at the time, who was very artistic and also very computer-literate.

“She, my wife Susie and I sat down and designed together the Play Hive with the idea of creating something totally unique.

“We knew it had to be large enough to get lots of people in, but we wanted to create an area where parents and children could actually play together.

“The Play Hive has really lifted us into a different level because it is completely different and it’s one of the largest indoor play areas.

“But it’s not soft play, we bring the outside play indoors; there’s a space theme, old fashioned flying theme, the underwater theme and the jungle theme.

“Within that journey, you move from theme to theme. It evolved as we went along.”