Farmers’ co-operative leader mourned after death aged 80

Rob was born in Pattingham, Shropshire, but spent his early years in Appleton, just outside Oxford.

His early schooling took him to Greycoats then Elstree, followed by Harrow, where he became head of house.

There, he witnessed old boy Winston Churchill returning to deliver a patriotic address as a finale to the traditional school songs.

Rob picked up squash at an early age. He won his house cup at Harrow as a new boy, before progressing to rackets and winning the public schools championship.

After Harrow, Rob went on to study agriculture at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Squash remained a strong interest, and whilst at Cambridge he won a blue and was selected for a joint Oxford and Cambridge tour of the US.

At the age of 19, he was introduced to Lesley Gairdner, from Ayrshire, and after a trip to a friend’s regimental ball in Glasgow, love blossomed.

They married in Ayr in 1961, and after a brief time as a land agent in Lanarkshire, where their eldest son Andrew was born, Rob persuaded the Roxburghe Estate to give him the newly-vacated tenancy of Otterburn Farm, near Morebattle.

They moved there in June 1963, and the family expanded, with Fenella, Michael and David following on.

Rob would describe his early days of farming as “mixed and hard”. The full harvest had to be carried by hand in huge hundredweight bags up to a first-floor granary loft.

While the house was a grand place for family life, the farm lacked the scale to generate much of a return on effort.

That was a challenge that Rob rose to, though, being instrumental in the forming of Glenteviot Farmers in the 1960s.

This group of likeminded farmers combined their buying power for commodities like fertilizer, then pooled the purchasing of machinery and the use of manpower – a real innovation at the time.

In 1974, Rob wrote up his experiences in a thesis on farm co-operation for the Royal Agricultural Societies, which became a study book for agri-students and earned him a fellowship in recognition of his outstanding contribution to UK agriculture and rural progress.

In 1975, Glenteviot was the subject of a BBC Scotland documentary. A recording of the programme emerged recently to be admired by the next generation, along with a bit of ribbing for some long-forgotten 1970s hairstyles adopted by the then young farmers.

All this activity would be enough for most farmers, but Rob was developing another project – working with Cedric Marshall to launch Agrikem, a crop-spraying and fertilizer distribution business, based out of a back yard at Ednam East Mill, near Kelso.

The operation grew into a thriving business and was known to locals for the crop-spraying helicopters featured on the company stand at the annual Border Union Show at Kelso.

So successful was this business that in 1986 Agrikem was sold to Perth’s CSC Crop Protection.

Rob continued to work for the newly-expanded group, commuting to its HQ in Perth on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, family life at Otterburn blossomed as the children grew up and Rob and Lesley contributed to many areas of community life.

Otterburn became a welcoming place for pony club eventers and local primary schoolchildren hunting for conkers along a row of ancient chestnuts.

Morebattle’s gun club was given space for clay shooting, and later the village stick-making group found a room for its traditional craftwork sessions. Rob, along with Lesley, joined St Andrew’s Church in Kelso and for many years he was a churchwarden. He spearheaded fundraising efforts including raising £60,000 for essential work and helped run its popular August bank holiday sale right up until last year.

Outside of the Borders and farming, Rob’s expertise as a businessman was recognised back in Oxford with a request to join the board at the family company, W. Lucy & Co, which expanded and over time became the Lucy Group, appearing in the Times top 250 company list in 2014 and 2017.

Back in the Borders, Rob’s passion for the outdoors and the countryside led him to be an early backer of Highfield Forestry, investing in woodland planting.

In 2002, he joined the board of the Lockerbie-based Heather Trust, stepping up to be chairman from 2003 to 2007 and remained involved until 2013, when he became life president

But creating successful businesses for himself was not enough for Rob, so in 2004 he founded Tricapital, a Melrose-based business angel syndicate to help create and grow Borders-based businesses and job opportunities.

Rob was chairman from its inception until the end of 2016, during which time he contributed to the creation of more than 500 jobs.

His wider contribution to the Scottish business angel sector was recognised and he was appointed a director of LINC Scotland in 2006 until retiring in 2012. After standing down as chairman of Tricapital and being appointed life president, Rob continued to find time to work with others and in 2016 joined the board of the Border Union Agricultural Society, owner of the Kelso showground. He helped to modernise its governance structure, becoming the first chairman of its new board of trustees.

However, life was not always kind to the family as their youngest son David tragically died of cancer in 2010. Shortly before that, Rob himself had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Rob’s illness never stopped him from applying his energies.

He continued to work just as hard and as selflessly as he could for the benefit of others in the mould of a true gentleman, but as illness gradually took its toll, Rob and Lesley decided to relinquish the tenancy of Otterburn and they moved to Kelso at the beginning of 2019.

Rob was a great sportsman. For many years he put out an R I Dick’s XI for a crunch cricket match against Yetholm and Morebattle and a fixture or two against the Borderers.

At the age of 80, he remained a talented player in the Nippers Tennis Club near Tillmouth and was one of the most regular participants with the tenacious ‘Wedgers’ at Roxburghe Golf Club.

His other sporting interest was shooting. In the Borders, that started with adventures on a rough shoot up the Bowmont Valley, as far as Sourhope and Wyndy Gyle, chasing the odd bird or two.

That was followed by a syndicate with friends and neighbouring farmers closer to home, then guest slots at a variety of locations all over the Borders and beyond. Rob loved the many roles he carved out in the Borders, and in return was highly regarded by a huge variety of people he knew and worked with as one of life’s givers. In recent times, any journey, whether it was from Otterburn to treatment in Edinburgh or latterly from Kelso to the Borders General Hospital at Melrose was punctuated with comments on who lived where, how he had met them, or a nearby business he worked with and perhaps a story of a shooting party, a long lunch, a tennis match or a time when he nearly got stuck in snow.

Rob is survived by his wife Lesley, children Andrew, Fenella and Michael and 13 grandchildren.

JA