My friend Chris Leyland, who has died of cancer aged 62, was that rare breed – a farmer for whom people mattered as much as the livestock in his care. In his native Northumberland, his most recent achievement was securing a future for the unique, 800-year-old Chillingham breed of wild cattle. Appointed park manager at Chillingham Castle in 2005, Chris used his farming expertise to double the herd numbers to more than a hundred today, by reversing decades of decay in their habitat.
But he will be best remembered by the Northumberland farming community as leader of a campaign that led to the creation of Bell View, a visionary approach to the housing and care of old people in Chris’s home town of Belford.
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Source: Guardian Environment