Countryside Education Trust Residential

Established in 1975, The Countryside Education Trust’s mission is to connect people to the wonders of the British countryside, rural life and farming. We offer catered, residential visits for primary, secondary and A-level groups and our expert teaching team tailors national curriculum-based modules to the needs of each group.

In addition to offering catered stays, we also offer self-catered visits during the school holidays and at weekends.

Being based on a farm in the heart of the New Forest means that we are able to offer a unique range of educational activities to our schools. These include animal feeding sessions, orienteering in our 40 acres of private woodland, access to the National Motor Museum and much more.

We only hire our residential center to one group at a time so you will have sole access to the facilities during your stay.

Our residential center has its own playground which our guests have exclusive access to. School groups have animal feeding sessions included in their timetable as a default option and self-catered guests can book an animal feeding session if they wish.

We can accommodate a maximum of 41 children and 6 adults.

We are happy for teachers to take photos and/ or videos while they are here.

All of our activities are risk assessed and are available on our website at Schools – Risk Assessments (cet.org.uk). We encourage all group leaders who have not visited us before to arrange a visit to the site prior to their trip.

Residential prices vary with the time of year and are available on enquiry. We allow for 3 free adult places per school for groups of up to 39 children and a fourth adult place free of charge for groups with 40+ children. Additional adults are charged at £115+VAT.

For details of our self-catered prices please email mail@cet.org.uk

All of our education staff carry their own first aid kits and undergo regular first training. First aid kits are also kept at multiple locations across our farm and woodland sites. We recommend that all visiting schools have a trained first aider with them for times when our education staff are not on site.

Shop, dining area, kitchen, shower block, toilets, study room, conservatory, playground and play field and free WIFI. We also have separate classrooms to hire if required.

All of our facilities are DDA compliant with wheelchair accessible buildings and fully accessible toilets.

Our office is staffed on weekdays between 9am and 5pm. Due to the busy nature of our work there are times when all of our staff will be out of the office. In the event that a member of staff is not available to take your call you can leave a message on our answer phone or email your enquiry to mail@cet.org.uk

We are based in the village of Beaulieu, home to the National Motor Museum and Bucklers Hard Historical village. Our center is the perfect base to access the New Forest and is within a 20 minute drive of Lyndhurst, Lymington, Burley, Brockenhurst and many other New Forest attractions.

Our residential center consists of two corridors – woodland (traditionally the boys wing) and heathland (traditionally the girls wing). Each corridor has 4 childrens’ rooms and two teachers’ rooms. There are separate toilet and shower facilities for children and adults.