HENRY Rodenhurst has been farming cattle at Wadborough Park Farm in the heart of rural Worcestershire since the 1970s.

The meat produced from the stock sold from his farm ends up on supermarket shelves and has supported his family. But Mr Rodenhurst is not a happy man.

A mystery smell, that officials say is coming from his farm, has turned him into a local pariah for many people living nearby. He says that despite co-operating with the authorities sent to track down the smell, he continues to be singled out as the person responsible.

He said: “I have nothing to hide. I tell the truth. If that smell was anything to do with my farm we would settle it, but it isn’t.

“We’ve done everything we’ve been asked to do.”

Mr Rodenhurst has helped get rid of what officials identified as possible sources of the smell in the past three months. But residents say the smell, which surfaced more than a year ago, persists.

Described as “like rotting meat” and “acrid”, the stench comes and goes and is “not an agricultural smell”, according to people who attended a public meeting on the issue.

The issue has been clouded further by a “sulphur smell”.

Business owners said it ruined summer trade, while hundreds of people living in the villages of Stoulton, Wadborough, Claverton and Littleworth said they have been driven from their gardens and forced to shut their windows to keep the pong out. Mr Rodenhurst said he has worked with officers from Worcestershire Regulatory Services and the Environment Agency.

At a public meeting on the issue in November, Steve Jorden, regulatory services chief, said Mr Rodenhurst and his son Ian Rodenhurst had been co-operative and had changed farming practices when asked.

Investigators who have visited the farm came up with four possible causes of the smell, said Mr Jorden.

When it was suggested the entirely legal practice of feeding spring onion leaves to the farm’s 3,000 cattle could be to blame, Mr Rodenhurst stopped it.

A slurry pit was cleaned out and investigators asked that the use of porous gypsum powder – a product recycled from unwanted plasterboard – in the cattles’ bedding was stopped because it was thought it was reacting with cattle muck.

Although using the powder is not illegal or uncommon, the farm has now switched to gypsum paper in bedding.

The fourth possible cause had been over the injection of sewage sludge into the ground by contractor Cleansing Services Group (CSG), but that has now ceased.

Mr Rodenhurst said he has endured four months of “hell” from investigators and he is angry that despite doing everything asked, the blame continues to be piled at his door even as the smell continues. Mr Jorden said: “The smell is definitely coming from that farm but we cannot rule anything out.

“I feel that we’re down to two scenarios: either it is a typical farm smell or there’s something there we just do not know about.”

Mr Rodenhurst is clear he has “nothing to hide”.

The final straw came at the public meeting when Mr Rodenhurst accused the regulators of “telling lies” to the people there about his farm.

He said: “Don’t pinpoint my farm. If it was anything to do with the cattle, the smell would be all the time.

“If it was my fields and my farm I would put my hands up but it isn’t.”

He said that although investigators have visited his farm in the last four months, gypsum and CSG’s soil injection had both been used on the farm for three years.

A neighbouring landowner says Mr Rodenhurst has been pursued in “a witch-hunt”.

He said: “Why can’t they prove it and show me? Otherwise, they’ll all be up in front of the judge.”

Mr Rodenhurst’s son said an independent report commissioned by Worcestershire Regulatory Services “did not blame this farm”.

Mr Rodenhurst has his own ideas about sources of the smell, claiming piles of human muck are lying on fields nearby.

He also said he reported the sulphuric smell might be down to a band of sulphur below ground being brought up in people’s private water boreholes at nearby homes.

But Mr Jorden said that had now been ruled out.

The Environment Agency is carrying out a cross-compliance investigation this week involving soil samples and other evidence gathering. An agency spokeswoman said: “We are planning the inspection at Wadborough Park Farm. The next phase of the investigation will depend on the findings.”