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 ultimately earned the 
title of the “first farmer of England.” Wuituiam 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 Boot 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 
