Countryfile - Blenheim Estate - 6:00 pm Sunday, February 1 on BBC One London HD

About this Broadcast

Blenheim Estate
Season 2026, Episode 1

John Craven and Margherita Taylor visit the Blenheim Estate in Oxfordshire, where the 300-year-old palace is undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime conservation project. Margherita heads up onto the rooftops to meet the craftspeople blending traditional skills with cutting-edge techniques, while John explores how the wider estate is being cared for. Back on his farm in the Cotswolds, Adam Henson prepares his Exmoor ponies, foals and donkeys for the months ahead

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Education/Science/Factual Topics Nature/Animals/Environment Rural/Agricultural

Did You Know..

John Craven (Presenter)

Born: August 16, 1940 in Leeds

Best Known For: John Craven's Newsround and Countryfile.

Early-life: Born in Leeds on August 16, 1940, and was educated at Leeds Modern School; other famous pupils include playwright Alan Bennett and actor Bob Peck. Craven started his professional life in print journalism as a junior reporter on the Harrogate Advertiser before working for the Yorkshire Post and as a freelance correspondent and writer for national newspapers. He joined the BBC staff in Newcastle upon Tyne, to work on local radio and TV, before moving to the BBC in Bristol.

Career: From 1972 he was the eponymous host of a regular children's news programme, Newsround, often called John Craven's Newsround. The first such programme ever produced by British TV, it drew on the full journalistic resources of the BBC, and featured a number of news scoops, it being the first news programme of the day on TV during its early years. In 1989 he left the Newsround programme and began to present what was then the BBC's new rural affairs programme, Countryfile; although no longer its main presenter, he remains a fixture on the show.

Quote: "The reality is that country people now have to fight to keep the things that once were taken for granted."

Trivia: He was awarded an OBE in 2000.

Margherita Taylor (Presenter)

Adam Henson (Presenter)

Best Known For: Countryfile.

Early-life: Adam was born in 1966 on the farm where he now works, Bemborough Farm near Guiting Power, Gloucestershire. He spent some time on the Chatsworth Estate before attending Seale-Hayne Agricultural College in Newton Abbot. After graduating, he spent a year travelling through Australia with his friend and later business partner Duncan Andrews. They worked on sheep and arable stations and a kiwi plantation in New Zealand before returning to Australia to plant tea in Queensland.

Career: Henson's father started the Cotswold Farm Park that he now runs with Andrews. It attracts more than 70,000 visitors a year. Henson made the move to TV in 2001 when he began presenting on Countryfile. Since then, he has worked on Countryfile Summer Diaries, Inside Out, Lambing Live and Radio 4's On Your Farm and Farming Today. In 2013, he worked with culinary writer Nigel Slater on Nigel and Adam's Farm Kitchen. Slater cooked fresh versions of supermarket favourites using produce grown by Henson.

Quote: "There's not much chance of me becoming a media darling when I have to come back (to the farm) and muck out the pigs after filming!"

Trivia: In his spare time, Henson enjoys shopping for clothes.

Mark Beech (Series editor)

Becky Pratt (Series producer)