Orwin’s account focused on Robert Smith’s rise and fall, and then the advent of sheep-herding. However, this chapter reveals a hidden dimension to the estate’s financial recovery after 1860—the take-over of its farms by previously despised local farmers. This change contradicted the earlier ‘colonising’ narrative, but local farmers could make farming on Exmoor pay by drawing on familial resources and their willingness to survive on low incomes. However, the chapter shows that their tight finances were felt most by local labourers, whose living standards and opportunities were poor. It then reviews the effects of steward Frederic Smyth’s new methods of land improvement, and the switch to sheep ranches on the unimproved moorland parts of the estate after 1870. By this time, however, moorland improvement was publicly depicted as an expensive failure—much to Frederic Knight’s annoyance.