Letcombe Laboratory

In 1959, the sizeable Letcombe Manor Estate at Letcombe Regis, a small downland village in the county of Berkshire (Oxfordshire from 1974), was purchased by ARC as the laboratory's permanent home. The 19th Century manor house (photograph) was retained for administration and several new buildings and experimental glasshouses added. By March 1962, most remaining staff at Grove and Compton had been transferred along with Russell as Director. The impact of an influx of scientists on the existing rural population of only a few hundred was considerable with the village undoubtedly benefitting from new job opportunities, more income for local businesses and a revitalisation of the parish council, primary school and general social life. However, the abandoning of atmospheric atomic weapon testing in 1962 and the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty the following year reduced radioactive fallout and thus placed a question mark over the long-term need for the Laboratory. Russell's response was to move the laboratory's work gradually in favour of experimental studies of plant root function by making use of existing research strengths and radioactivity-measuring equipment. A national centre of expertise in root physiology was certainly desirable since scientific understanding of roots lagged far behind that of above-ground parts despite the tending of the root environment (i.e., the soil) being a major task of arable farming. The research was organised primarily around laboratory-based physiology linked to studies of root behaviour in the field, the latter concentrating on the impact of recently introduced minimal cultivation and direct drilling techniques on soil conditions and root performance. These field studies, in particular, benefitted from close collaboration with the nearby ARC Weed Research Organisation at Begbroke, Oxfordshire^[8] and with the MAAF Experimental Field Drainage Unit at Cambridge. The direction of this work was also influenced by a report from the UK Agricultural Advisory Board and MAFF entitled 'Modern farming and the soil'.^[9]

The re-orientated Letcombe Laboratory attracted several new principal investigators and, over the next 20 years, proved increasingly productive in terms of its scientific output and influence on farming practice. During that time, publications on root physiology and agronomy amounted to some 420 peer-reviewed articles, 100 book chapters, 13 authored or edited books and 150 shorter reports. In addition, there were numerous publications relating to the work on radionuclide contamination which continued on a diminished scale throughout. In May 1982, under Dr J.V. Lake (Director since 1978) the laboratory marked its silver jubilee with three consecutive open days under the banner of "Roots at Work". However, despite this high watermark, cracks were already appearing in the financial and conceptual support for Letcombe and similar organisations. These were clearly discernible in the views of the highly influential (Lord) Victor Rothschild, who had been Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council from 1948 to 1958 and, as stated above, instrumental in bringing Letcombe Laboratory into being in the first place. Years earlier, Rothchild's discontent with how research priorities were identified and acted upon was outlined in a lecture^[10] marking the 1953 golden jubilee of Long Ashton Research Station another ARC-funded laboratory then specialising in fruit research. By 1971, these views were formalised and extended by Rothschild's influential but controversial^[11] report "The Organisation and Management of Government R&D". At the time, Rothschild was Head of the Central Policy Review Staff, a part of Central Government's Cabinet Office.^[12] By 1974, his recommendations had been acted-on. They created tensions at Letcombe and elsewhere between perceived needs for applied research to be paid for by MAAF (the "customer") and more curiosity-driven work to be funded by ARC (the "contractor"). In a speech made at Letcombe in September 1973 Rothschild foreshadowed the Laboratory's eventual closure by stating "We have to realise that we have neither the money nor the resources to do all those things we would like to do and so often feel we have the right to do" (Agricultural Research Council, 1974).^[13] Because of its wide implications for the public expenditure in the UK, the speech made headline news in the national press. In the year following Letcombe's Silver Jubilee (1982), AFRC published a Corporate Plan which announced that the Letcombe Laboratory would be closed to help accommodate a £2.4 million cut in the council's budget (the "Barnes Cuts") and to comply with new central government policy of leaving near-market science to the private sector. Some scientists were relocated to either University of Bristol's Long Ashton Research Station (closed in 2003) or to Rothamsted Experimental Station (now Rothamsted Research Ltd) with some existing long-term field experiments located elsewhere in the country being retained and allowed to run their course. By 1985, the Letcombe site had been sold to Dow Elanco a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. The name Letcombe Laboratory was retained and the site redeveloped as the company's European centre for fungicide research. After 17 years this too was closed, thus bringing to an end 45 years of research at the site. It was sold for re-development as a retirement village, leaving the Letcombe Valley, a 7.5 ha stretch of Letcombe Brook, as a nature reserve in the care of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust under a 50-year lease.