Chris Ascroft (Bazza) HND 75/78

Chris Ascroft (Bazza) HND 75/78

Died Feb 2nd 2022 as a result of a farming accident.

Upon finishing Shuttleworth, Bazza helped at home on the farm and worked for a family friend who farmed in Fenstanton.

In 1979 he travelled over the Irish Sea to live and work on his Uncle and Aunt’s Estate at Powerscourt in Co Wicklow. Whilst there he played rugby for BectiveRangers.

On returning home he was contacted by the late Rupert Meadows who was leaving a role at Great Wilbraham and had put his name forward as a potential candidate. He was interviewed and got the job starting on the 2nd February 1981. At that time the farm was 650 acres with a number of tenancies across the estate. Over the next few years all the tenancies came back in hand and he also took on extra land through contracting, ending up farming over 2000 acres. As the farm grew he needed to recruit a tractor driver, which he did and they then worked together for over 34 years. Wilbraham was his home for 41 years and we celebrated his 40th work anniversary last summer; a surprise party which left him speechless, a very rare occurrence.

He would always acknowledge people when driving through the village even if he didn’t know who they were, and would always find time to speak to people walking around the footpaths of the farm and engage and educate them in what was going on in the fields. Even in the height of Covid he did a Zoom farm walk which was so well received that once lockdown restrictions were lifted he was able to do another one in person. Explaining what was growing in the fields, the farming process and where the final product ended up. He would always reprimand anyone with Tate and Lyle sugar in their cupboard, always supporting British farming.

He was an extremely passionate and knowledgeable farmer who was always at the frontier of development, striving to learn and gain knowledge on anything that could help and improve farming methods. He could happily bore people with talk on RTK GPS Signal, self-steering tractors, malting barley and peas.

With retirement looming he was asked relatively recently if he had any thoughts of retiring, if so the farm would need to think about future management. However his love and passion for the job and the farm was as strong as ever, and although he was starting to feel age catching up with

him he was definitely not ready for retirement.

Bazza married Zoe and they had twin children, Jonathan and Clare. He was delighted when his first grandchild arrived in 2019 and was always happy to crawl around playing with toy tractors with him and taking him around the farm. Hattie who arrived in 2020 was treated exactly the same.

Many thanks to Zoe for the above, and at short notice too! Ed

You can watch one of Chris’s Virtual Tours of the Farm by clicking this link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPX9dsBz6UQ

Some OND 77/80s

Left to right: Tim Hubbard, Marc Woods, Rob Lane, Guy Kiddy and Andy Purser.

Thanks to Mike King for this random Photo. If you have any ‘random photos’; please send them in, just the thing to embarrass your mates!