The estate comprises about 2,000 acres, the larger part of which was bought, as marsh-land, from the adjacent communes some forty years ago by an Agricultural Co-operative Society for the purpose of development. On the failure of this Society the Canton of Berne became the owner in 1891 at a cost of about £30,000 for land and buildings, the latter then in bad condition. The communications are good, since there are two railway stations within two miles of the centre of the estate. The land is, on the whole, fertile when properly drained, and a portion of it is of excellent quality and suitable for winter wheat, clover, and grass; other portions are more suited to pasture, vegetables, and forestry, and there is a stretch of peat land and sand. When the estate was adopted for the purpose of a Forced Labour Colony the first works carried out on a large scale were road making, drainage, and building, and these have greatly increased the value of the Colony. There are two distinct farms, Lindenhof and Nusshof, the latter being now used as a Voluntary Labour Colony for discharged prisoners. The Lindenhof Colony is the principal one, and the buildings there comprise (1) the administrative block; (2) a large prison, containing 100 habitable cells, punishment cells, school, church, sickroom, kitchen, offices, workrooms for tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, basket makers, and book binders, with other workrooms in which the prisoners can be employed in straw work, besom making, etc., in bad weather; also living and bedrooms for the attendants, out-buildings and cellars; (3) dwelling-house, with bakery, washhouse, laundry, and bedrooms for officers and attendants; (4) workshops for workers in iron and wood, with rooms for the necessary machines; (5) stalls and sheds for 270 cattle, 30 horses, and 150 pigs, hay and straw lofts, and dwellings for the farm servants and their families; (6) machine room and warehouses. The buildings belonging to the Nusshof Colony comprise (1) two dwelling houses for the superintendent and his family and the assistants, quarters for discharged prisoners who have returned to Witzwil owing to their being without employment, and who receive food, lodging, and a small money payment in return for their labour; (2) stalls and sheds for 100 cows, several oxen, hay and straw lofts and cellars for root crops. The other buildings scattered about the estate include a cheesery, dwellings for hinds and their families and for turbary labourers, cattle-sheds, barns, and peat sheds, etc. There is an electric power and light station, and the principal depots are connected by telephone. For some years all necessary buildings, roads, drainage, etc., have been done by the prisoners under the direction of paid overseers, and in this way the value of the estate has been greatly increased.