Tributes have been paid to the well-known and hugely respected farmer and founder of Moyfield Riding School, Joan Bomford, who has died aged 92.
Known affectionately as Mrs B, Joan rose to national prominence in 2015 when she was named the first BBC Countryfile Farming Hero.
Her memoir ‘Up With The Lark: My Life on the Land’, an account of her lifelong love affair with the land and the people who worked on it was published in the same year.
Joan’s book Up with the Lark published by Hodder and Stoughton.
During her lifetime, she made an enormous impact on those who knew her through her equestrian work, numerous charitable endeavours, and, along with her late husband Tony, the organisation of the Vale of Evesham horse and cattle show in various formats for five decades.
According to her son Colin, the riding school at Norval Farm, South Littleton was “her life and passion”. She loved teaching all ages to ride and was still doing paperwork for the business just days before her peaceful death on Tuesday, January 28.
Joan was born on June 26, 1932, at her parent’s farm, Quarry Pits at Dormston near Inkberrow. Educated at Alcester Grammar School she often played truant and once she had arrived in the morning would start to walk back home to help her dad out on the farm.
Joan in her late teens. Pictures – Bomford family
She came to South Littleton in 1954 as a newlywed and started up a riding school with just one mount – her beloved black and white horse called Sparks. In its heyday during the 1970s to 90s the popular school and livery yard was home to 110 horses and 10 live-in staff.
She had a lifelong love of country life, horses, and farming and, at one point, kept the oldest British Friesian herd in the county. According to Colin, Joan had several vintage tractors and was still working the soil on a David Brown as late as last September.
Joan had always wanted to be a farmer just like her father.
Charity work took up a lot of her time. She was a keen supporter of Riding for the Disabled Association and had regularly provided dozens of horses to the Sealed Knot reenactment society for events all over the country.
She is remembered for being an enormously kind, humorous, hard-working, and quick-witted individual who regularly took in all manner of waifs and strays, be that human or animal.
The late Joan Bomford and her beloved collie Zip.
Colin said: “She was charitable to an awful lot of people. A one-off. A lot of people have said ‘the mould has been broken’.”
Joan leaves behind three other children – Marie, Joe and Kim, seven grand and 10 great-grandchildren. “The one word that keeps cropping up when people talk about her is ‘legend’ – she was one in a million,” Colin added.
Her funeral will take place on Thursday, February 20, at 1pm at All Saints Church, Evesham. St Lawrence’s Church will also be open with a video and sound link to the service. After a private burial, members of the public are welcome to join Joan’s family at Quarry Pit Farm, Dormston for a wake.
