Tommy Eade, devoted countryman, land agent and president of the Royal Forestry Society – obituary

Tommy Eade, who has died aged 90, was agent to Lord Barnard’s Shropshire estate from 1964 until 1995, and later forestry adviser both there and on the extensive Raby estates in Co Durham.

A true countryman and esteemed tree man (he was president of the Royal Forestry Society from 1999 to 2001), he was perfectly suited to the role of resident agent in the less regulated days when large estates could more easily afford to look after the local community and countryside.

In his era – and that of his father, who had begun working at Raby in the 1920s – the Shropshire estate could seem like some bygone pastoral idyll, with its own water supply from a spring on the Wrekin, every estate worker from the carpenter to the ditch digger having a house for life, and Mr Eade as the benign and no-nonsense overseer.

Charles Aylmer Eade, called Tommy as a baby by his mother, was born on September 2 1929 at Weeton, near Leeds. His father had given up the Bar to train as a land agent on the expectation (only partially met) that he would inherit the nearby Seacroft estate from his bachelor uncle Darcy Wilson.

His apprenticeship included a spell as Raby’s under-agent in Shropshire, living next to the vicarage at Wroxeter, where he soon fell for the vicar’s daughter, who was just 18 when they married and 20 when Tommy was born.

Tommy’s father was by then in his late thirties – and having won an MC as a dispatch rider on the Western Front, where his younger brother died at Ypres, he may have seemed even older. Tommy’s mother bolted when he was two or three, and did not reappear in his life for more than a decade.

Until moving to Uppington aged 14 after his father remarried, Tommy grew up at Astley, a handsome Greek Revival house just north of Shrewsbury, where he was devotedly looked after by “Nan” Shenton.

Much of his childhood revolved around ponies and hunting, his father being a fine natural horseman and secretary of the North Shropshire Hunt. Aged eight, he was sent to Kings Mead prep school on the south coast and later to Marlborough, leaving shortly after the Second World War, during which Astley had housed evacuee children from Liverpool.

By this time his father had remarried, to Honor Meyrick, of nearby Apley Castle, who soon gave Tommy two younger sisters, Diana and Caroline.

During National Service with The Queen’s Bays, Eade learnt to darn his own socks and jumpers, a habit he continued into married life. He subsequently trained as a chartered surveyor and began work as a land agent for Cooke & Arkwright at Mold, and later at Bridgend and Hereford.

His father stayed on as the Raby agent until he was 75, allowing his son to gain enough experience to succeed him, which he duly did.

The job came with the kinds of perks that it would be hard to imagine today. They included having the shooting over most of the estate, and in the early years even a part-time gamekeeper.

Eade ran an enjoyably low-key shoot until he was in his eighties. In the old days lunch was eaten on trestle tables by a bonfire.

His fellow guns often found themselves in for a long wait while their host disappeared with his beaters on elaborate manoeuvres aimed at getting the few wild birds to fly in their general direction. The bag was never spectacular.

Another great love was growing vegetables and he would take surplus produce to Wellington market, where he befriended various stallholders.

Having joined the Shropshire Yeomanry in 1950, Tommy Eade was lieutenant colonel commanding the regiment from 1967 until its disbandment two years later.

Together with a cadre of six officers and other ranks he then kept its name alive in the Royal Armoured Corps for two years until, in 1971, he became the first commanding officer of the reconstituted as C (Shropshire Yeomanry) Squadron of The Queen's Own Mercian Yeomanry, which included the Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire Yeomanry squadrons.

He was a deputy lieutenant of Shropshire for 28 years, and a church warden for more than 40 years at Holy Trinity Church in Uppington.

Unshowy in most things – including cars (he never deviated from Vauxhalls) – he was none the less a dapper dresser and a regular visitor to his London tailor.

He and his wife Jill (née Whitefoord), whom he married in 1960, were enthusiastic hosts and needed little excuse to call the marquee man and throw a party.

Jill survives him with their three daughters and a son.

Tommy Eade, born September 2 1929, died August 27 2020