A leading member and former
secretary to Stalham Farmers’ Club, Nigel Wright, died peacefully at home died
just days before his 84th birthday on January 9, 2022.
He was the club’s vice-president
and a former chairman in 1991. He was secretary between 1962 and 1985 having
followed a family tradition and his uncle Roy had held the same post in the
1930s. A staunch supporter of the National Farmers’ Union, he was county
chairman, serving a two-year term from 1995. Later he was elected chairman of
the East Anglian NFU board. In November 1999, as the regional chairman, he led
a high-profile campaign to promote the return of British beef to France with
Norfolk NFU chairman Robert Steven. They presented a topside joint of Norfolk
beef, actually from near neighbours Mary and Alan Beck of Brunstead, to the
French honorary consul for East Anglia.
Born into a Broadland farming
family in January 1938, he was the oldest of three children, including sister
Wendy and younger brother, Rupert, known as Toby. His grandfather William had
farmed 2,000 acres at Ludham Hall and his father, Ivan, who died in 1948, had
taken over Church Farm, Stalham. Nigel went to Town Close School, Norwich, and
Gresham’s, Holt, and then studied at the Royal Agricultural College,
Cirencester, before returning to the family farm. It was then a typical mixed
holding with about 18 Ayrshire and Friesian milking cows – and employing a
total of 17 staff.
As Mr Wright recalled in June
2007, as part of the EDP’s The Rural Revolution series, the east Norfolk market
town of Stalham in the early 1950s was almost self-sufficient with shops and
banks. While it had a declining livestock and produce market, there was a
slaughterhouse, grain merchants, Woodrow’s mill, and a regular passenger and
goods train service. The farm was close to Stalham Staithe, where sugar beet
could be loaded into wherries for processing at Cantley factory. After the long
drought in 1947, when a nine-acre field of beet was lifted, it hardly filled a
40-ton wherry, he said. In the 1950s, during the annual beet campaign, British
Rail would bring wagons into sidings at Stalham. “You would be allocated one or
two trucks a week which would sit there until you’d filled them up.” It was
hard work, throwing beet off a tractor and trailer into a railway wagon,
holding about 13 tons, he added.
By 1956, the Suffolk horses had
gone as tractors took over and the dairy herd was sold in 1964 as the farm
switched to more arable crops. There were improvements – the laying of main
sewers ended the need for the “honey cart” - and there was still a good train
service. He remembered leaving his front door to catch the 8.20am train to
Leicester for lunch with his (late) sister Wendy. Many people travelled by
train to work in North Walsham or Yarmouth.
Mr Wright was the backbone of
Stalham Farmers’ Club, which had been founded in 1841. He served as chairman in
1991 and typically modest, declined nomination as president on several
occasions. In 1997, his eldest son Alistair won the club’s prestigious Cantley
sugar beet Cup for highest overall yield for the second year running. They also
won Stalham’s competition for best two-acre sugar beet crop in 2012. In 1997,
he and his great friend Roger Beck, judged the Suffolk Agricultural
Association’s champion farms’ competition. Speaking at the club’s 175th
anniversary celebrations in June 2016 at How Hill Farm, Ludham, he recalled
that he had been fortunate enough to have attended the club’s 125th
and the 150th. But, he joked, he would be 103 when the club marked
its bicentenary in 2041. He recalled too that the club in 1966 had 127 members
– then all farmers and it had assets of £94 11s 4d (£94.57).
He was a Norfolk Rainfall
Organisation recorder for more than half a century at Church Farm. Since 1972,
he noted that the driest year was 1973 when 18.49 ins (469.89mm) was recorded –
the wettest, 1987, had 920.24mm (36.22 ins). Average rainfall at Stalham has
declined – the 32-year average was 27.4ins while the 10-year average was 25.9ins.
A member of the Broads Authority
for many years, he was also elected to North Norfolk (District) Council in the
1980s, serving at least eight years, and failed to be re-elected by just eight
votes. He was a member of Stalham Town Council. A keen sailor, he enjoyed
gardening too. He also cultivated a species of geranium with distinctive salmon
pink leaves, which was very similar in colour to some local bricks, Ingham
salmons.
In the 2007 EDP article, he said
that a clay pit in Ingham, just over the hedge from one of his fields, was a
source of material for these flat (and frogless) bricks. Some of the bricks
used in his garage were Ingham salmons and he recalled shortly after the second
world war seeing the last of these bricks being fired.
Married in 1960 to Pam, they
marked the diamond jubilee. He is survived by his widow, and leaves three
children, Alistair, Ben, and Jess, and five grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held on Wednesday, January 26 at Ingham church,
11am.