OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 215 



"FIRST FARMER OF ENGLAND" 



84. Success has always come to him who has both brains and 

 property. This is the tale of a farmer who rose by brains and 

 without property, a tenant farmer who uhimately earned the 

 title of the "first farmer of England." Wiluam Torr was of 

 Lincolnshire. He gained the qualifications that ultimately 

 earned him his enviable sobriquet by mastering completely, 

 one stage at a time, each of the practices necessary for perfec- 

 tion in farm management. First of all, he wrought with the 

 soil, and worked on the best methods of tillage until to equal 

 his crops became the despair of his brother tenants of the east 

 of England. He then took up sheep, selecting the breed of 

 Bakewell (78) and show and market alike gave unstinted appro- 

 bation to his carcasses and fleeces. 



These successes made it possible for him to take up the breed- 

 ing of Shorthorns, and in 1844 he opened his real career as 

 cattle breeder by leasing the famous Leonard of Booth breed- 

 ing. Mr. Torr had an ultimate ideal in mind and selected con- 

 tinuously toward it. Smooth laid shoulder, wide flung fore- 

 ribs, powerful loins and wealth of flesh represented his ideal 

 in form, while mellow touch and furry coat were as distinctly 

 his concept of cover. At the Kirklevington dispersion of 1849, 

 Mr. Torr found much of merit in the Waterloos, and developed 

 the strain in his own herd by crossing on Booth bulls. 



Mr. Torr once said "it takes thirty years for any man to make 

 a herd and bring it to one's notion of perfection." He devoted 

 just that length of time to Shorthorn cattle, when his death 

 occurred in 1875. From all over the kingdom came purchasers 

 to Aylesby, and even though accommodations had been prepared 



