Farms for City Children is a UK registered charity which aims to provide experience of farm and countryside life for inner-city children.
In 1976 author Michael Morpurgo and his wife, Clare Morpurgo (the oldest daughter of Sir Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books), established the charity Farms for City Children, with the primary aim of providing children from inner city areas with experience of the countryside. Clare Morpurgo used her legacy after her father’s death to found the charity. The programme involves the children spending a week at a countryside farm, during which they take part in purposeful farmyard work.
The first children arrived in January 1976 at Nethercott House and the charity now has three farms, in Devon, Gloucestershire and Wales In 1999 the couple were created Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of these services to youth.
Michael Morpurgo has described how the relationship between young boy with a stammer who came with Farms for City Children to Devon for a week and a horse on the farm was partly responsible for inspiring the novel War Horse.