About Us

The Lund is home to Debbie Loane, Steve Pomfret, our two boys and Iggy the dog. For the past 20 years we have been renovating, re-purposing, and more recently, re-wilding an old farmstead on The Lund in rural North Yorkshire. (Where? see HERE)

Debbie is a landscape artist continually drawn to the wild expanses of the North of England. She recently spent a year as Artist in Residence on the Rahoy Estate, Morvern, North West Scotland and prior to that a year as Artist in Residence on The Cleveland Way National Trail. Debbie has a dedicated webpage HERE

Steve is the face behind Lund Studios, hosting creative courses by artists and makers from across the UK. The studio is a large converted dairy, though the courses often spill out into surrounding woodland and meadow or further afield up onto the edge of the North York Moors. To learn more about Lund Studios visit the webpage HERE

Our history on The Lund goes back to the mid ‘80s when Debbie’s family moved up to Lund Farm from The South. The farm is just one of several that makes up ‘The Lund’ - a tract of land extending over several small farms and woodland just to the west of the market town of Easingwold, north of York. Debbie set up studio in one of the outbuildings on the farm and has kept a presence here ever since, returning on a regular basis whenever living and working away.

After several wonderful years in the North Pennines we moved to the city of York in 2001. Debbie established a dedicated studio space in a partially converted pigshed here at The Lund and our day-to-day life here truly began. Later that same year we celebrated our marriage in the central cattle barn, surrounded by family and life-long friends (some of whom have since ‘tied the knot’ here themselves!).

Our love of the Lund grew year by year and, in partnership with Debbie’s parents, we began a journey of re-purposing and renovating the beautiful but ramshackle farm buildings. After years of planning followed by months of building, Debbie opened the doors to Lund Gallery in September 2005 in a large and light re-purposed dairy. The Gallery grew from small beginnings to become an amazing success, exhibiting ceramics and paintings by hundreds of makers from across the UK and beyond. We had the privilege of meeting many inspirational, artists, makers and collectors - it was a rather humbling experience!

The gallery inspired us to rejuvenate more of the redundant farm outbuildings. Conversion of the old granary and tractor barn allowed us to create new exhibition space while at the same time create a small cottage - our home - Wren Cottage. We moved from York to the Lund in 2009 and our family started to grow.

After a long career as a chocolate research scientist (yes - really… it is a job) Steve left the world of confectionery in 2016 to dedicate his time to life here on the Lund. Steve is now looks after Lund Studios, hosting courses run by artists and makers from across the UK, including Debbie, ever since.

How we live here, how we interact with the landscape around us, and how we feel about the whole concept of ‘being creative’ continues to evolve every day. The large old dairy that used to be our Gallery exhibiting and selling work, has now become a studio for sharing and creativity. Lund Gallery pops up every now and again for feature exhibitions of Debbie’s work along with work of others we respect and admire - when we feel the time is right.

We’ve also come to understand that we can work with the 14 acres of land that surrounds the studios in a more creative and balanced way. Over the years this land has been grazed, and cultivated for silage and hay. In agreement with Debbie’s mother who owns the fields, the cycle of fertilising, spraying and grazing has now come to an end and over the ‘lockdown’ winter of 2020/21 we undertook The Lund Field Project - planting 1400 trees in a four and a half acre field behind the Studio. A mixture of 26 native species including oak, cherry, rowan, alder, aspen, willow, horbeam and lime, undersown with wildflower meadow. If you’d like to know more - see our pages on ‘Pomfret’s Wood’.

We set this process in motion down a particular path, though we now intend to leave the woodland to determine it’s own course with minimal intervention. It’s wonderful to see the courses spill out of the Studio into the woodland and meadow, sometimes as inspiration, often just to sit, think, and be part of the landscape.

Our most recent venture is Skylark Cottage, a one-bedroom self-contained self-catering retreat here at The Lund. If you’d like to spend some time in this wonderful landscape, maybe while you’ll on a course here, or maybe just because… then take a look at the Skylark Cottage pages HERE.

We do not receive any external funding. We do not have any external shareholders or investors. Any profit we make we endeavour to re-invest into sharing creativity at this beautiful place The-Lund.

Nature - Place - Creativity.