​Ian Midgley discovers that life down on the farm has taken on a rather different look when he visits the North Yorkshire village of Staxton. A series of decaying Victorian agricultural buildings is now home to a “community of artists” . . .

Ginny and husband Oliver in the coffee shop that was developed as a complementary business, to add to the appeal of the gallery as a visitor destination

Willerby Wold Farm has always been a place where innovation has thrived alongside the quiet ebb and flow of rural life.

It was here the Anglo Saxons built their burial mounds and before them the Romans their fortifications. In the 1920s, it was the first farm in Yorkshire to embrace the mechanical age and have its own combine harvester.

Now, as we roll into the second decade of the 21st Century, the 814-acre farm is writing another chapter in its long and varied history as it opens its arms to Yorkshire’s painters and sculptors with the launch of its own contemporary art gallery and studios.

Where once stood a rickety range of grain sheds and outhouses now stands a crisp, gleaming new art gallery, coffee house and painters’ studios, known collectively as The Yorkshire Wolds Gallery, which has been the brainchild of farmer’s wife and fine art graduate Ginny Sutton.

Perched on the North Yorkshire border, with the expanse of the East Riding Wolds laid out before it to the south and the North York Moors to the north, the gallery is in an enviable position.

Although it is barely minutes outside of the East Riding, in the hamlet of Staxton, it feels like arriving in an altogether different county as you pull up outside its rough-hewn stone walls.

Maybe it’s the ear-popping drop down to the village of Foxholes, and into the North Yorkshire district of Ryedale, before you arrive at your destination that makes it feels like you’re touching down after a short flight.

The gallery is housed in a series of restored Victorian farm buildings which looked set to crumble into disuse before Ginny was struck by the thought they could be given new life with a radical change of purpose.

Now, instead of leaking oil tanks and ramshackle tin roofs, you’ll find cutting-edge landscapes, figurative works and contemporary sculpture – all housed in a stunning new 90 square metre gallery.

When I visit, the gallery is hosting striking “Linescape” prints by local graphic designer Ian Mitchell; panoramic oils by French-born artist Clothylde Vergnes; giant, striking figurative acrylic works of light bouncing off perfume bottles by Scarborough painter Ann Aveyard and a whole range of hand-crafted ceramics and pottery.

Ginny Sutton, owner of Yorkshire Wolds Art Gallery, Staxton, with some of the exhibits

The intention is to change the exhibition every three months, says Ginny, with the winter selection on show until 31st December.

It has taken five years from the original germ of an idea to the culmination of Ginny’s dream, including 12 gruelling months of building and restoration work, but now the gallery is a reality she believes it has been worth the effort.

Ginny, who studied at London’s Central School of Art, but more recently completed a fine arts degree course at the University Of Hull, says the impetus behind the gallery was to create somewhere creativity could blossom.

“I used to look at the buildings and think ‘that would make the most amazing painting studio’,” she says. “The initial idea came from that and the rest just took on a life of its own from there.

“During the last year of my fine arts degree at Hull, I started thinking about studio space and realised how difficult it was for new artists to find adequate space to work or exhibit their paintings.

“It’s not just about the gallery, though. I wanted to create a community of artists here. It was so inspiring to be working within a group of artists, painters and sculptors on the university’s Scarborough campus and I wanted to recreate that here. I believe artists thrive and spark off each other.

“I began to see the potential of our old farm buildings for a community of artists.”

Making the dream a reality was a far from easy ride, however, with planning permission and funding to be sought.

The multi-million pound project was eventually made possible by a farm diversification grant from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, combined with support from Yorkshire Forward, the region’s development agency. The European Agricultural Fund also released some of the money needed to make the gallery possible.

A rickety range of grain sheds and outhouses were transformed for the gallery venture

“It was a lot of hard work to pull everything together – but I never thought of giving up,” says Ginny.

“I was quite single-minded about what I wanted. I think because it had been in my mind for so long, I couldn’t see a future without it. I knew it would happen.

“I’d been training as an artist for so long, years and years, it would’ve been a complete waste if we hadn’t pulled it off.

“But now it is absolutely what I envisioned. Even when it was half-built I could see in my mind’s eye exactly how it would look. Now, every time I walk up to the gallery I love it – there is still an element of ‘I can’t believe we’ve achieved this’.”

For Ginny’s husband, Oliver, who is the third generation of Suttons to farm at Willerby Wold, the gallery also evokes feelings of pride, tinged with fond memories of the building’s agricultural past.

The farmer also knows his onions (as well as potatoes, wheat and barley) when it comes to art. He met Ginny while they were both studying art in London 35 years ago.

“I’ve grown up on this farm. My father and my grandfather were here before me, so it’s nice to see it develop and adapt for the future,” says Oliver.

“It has always been an innovative place, my grandfather bought this place after the First World War and he was the first farmer in Yorkshire to have a combine harvester.

“I can still remember as a five-year-old watching people hauling 16-stone sacks of grain up those stone steps. It’s a bit more genteel these days – now it’s artists carrying up canvases.”

In addition to the exhibition gallery, the farm is also now home to a coffee shop, while the two-storey Victorian granary that bookends the building has also been renovated to become a private exhibition space.

On the granary’s first floor, up the imposing stone steps where generations of farm labourers once trod, there are also two connected studios with enough room for 10 working artists.

Ginny said: “Very few galleries have coffee shops attached and it made sense to introduce a complementary business, which will add to the appeal of the gallery as a visitor destination.

“I know entering a gallery can be a little intimidating for a lot of people. They’re not really sure about going in and what they should do. But with a coffee shop next to it, it serves as a buffer zone where people can sit down and have a cuppa and then venture further in to see the art.”

Looking further into the future, Ginny and Oliver hope to establish the Yorkshire Wold Gallery not only as a place known for its creativity, but also as a destination for business and pleasure.

“The main gallery makes a fantastic entertaining space for weddings, private lunches or as a lunch or tea-stop for tour groups visiting local gardens and attractions,” says Ginny.

“To be surrounded by beautiful works of art or sculpture makes it a venue with a distinct difference.”

The Yorkshire Wolds Gallery, at Willerby Wold Farm, Fordon Lane, Staxton, North Yorkshire, is open Wednesday to Sunday, plus bank holidays, from 10am to 4pm. For more details, call (01944) 710527.