Crebilly Farm in Chester County Spared From Development at Long Last

Natural Lands and Westtown Township announced today that they now have all the money they need to conclude the purchase of Crebilly Farm in hand. / Photograph by Edward Holden via Natural Lands

The seven-year effort to preserve Crebilly Farm in Chester County has come to a successful conclusion with a dash to the finish line.

Natural Lands and Westtown Township announced today (Nov. 1st) that the conservation group’s Save Crebilly Campaign had achieved its goal of raising the last money needed to buy 208 acres of the farm from the Robinson family, which has owned it since 1937.

The two-month campaign targeted the farm’s neighbors in Westtown, Thornbury and Birmingham townships. Natural Lands asked households within a 10-mile radius of Crebilly Farm to “come together, friend by friend, neighbor by neighbor, gift by gift” to raise the last of the nearly $20.8 million needed to buy two-thirds of the 208-acre parcel.

Kit Werner, senior director of communications for Natural Lands, says that the fundraising drive will have brought in about $250,000 once final figures are tallied. More than 750 households donated to the campaign. The funds raised will be matched dollar for dollar by a gift from the Mt. Cuba Center, a botanic garden in Hockessin, Del., and an anonymous donor.

This campaign follows a 2022 referendum in which Westtown Township voters approved property and income tax hikes to provide $7.5 million towards the acquisition cost. Natural Lands is combining these funds with government and private grants and the money raised in the Save Crebilly Campaign to complete the purchase. The sale is set to close next month.

“It’s a testament to how special and iconic Crebilly is,” says Werner. “It also shows what a community can do when it wants to preserve something special.”

The arrows in this photo posted to the Neighbors for Crebilly Farm website in 2017 point to where American Gen. Adam Stephen would have spotted Hessian soldiers marching across the farmstead from his vantage point at Sandy Hollow.

Crebilly Farm is the site of the first skirmishes in the 1777 Battle of Brandywine, when American Gen. Adam Stephen dispatched soldiers to engage Hessian troops marching across the farm site towards the main American forces at Sandy Hollow. The fight to save the farm as open space for future generations began in 2017 after Toll Brothers announced plans to purchase the farm in order to build a subdivision. The township managed to kill that effort by denying Toll Brothers the permits it would need, but saving the farm would still require money. That came from the township, the grants Natural Lands received, and this campaign along with the matching donations.

“It took an extraordinary coalition of funders to preserve Crebilly Farm,” Natural Lands president Oliver Bass said in a news release. “This included leadership support from public partners to include the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (using grant monies from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund), the Chester County Commissioners, and the residents of Westtown Township.” Other major funders include the Open Space Institute (using funds provided by the William Penn Foundation) and the Marshall Reynolds Foundation.

Werner added that the effort would not have succeeded without the support of the Robinson family, the descendants of the founder of Acme Markets. The family agreed to negotiate a sale to the township after briefly putting the entire 309-acre farm up for sale in 2022.

“We are extremely thankful to Natural Lands and join them in our heartfelt gratitude for everyone, known and unknown, who has generously contributed their creativity, spirit, time, talent, and financial resources to make this momentous occasion possible,” David and Laurie Robinson said in the news release. “We are humbled by the incredible community support in fulfilling this extraordinary conservation and preservation effort.”

Werner notes that Natural Lands, the region’s oldest land conservation organization, has to compete with developers to save open space. “We have to buy land at market values in order to preserve it,” she says. In this case, Natural Lands had plenty of support from Westtown Township and its residents as it sought to raise the purchase price.

It will take a few more years, however, for the farm to be converted to a public park. Westtown Township, which will own the farm, intends to make it a passive use park with trails winding through its landscape. The 101 acres not included in the deal were divided into four separate parcels that were put on the market in the spring of 2022. Three of the four parcels have been taken off the market, but the one containing the homestead remains for sale.