Tributes are being paid to a man who was passionate about farming and also about the people he represented as a councillor.
David Mellor, who passed away in Stepping Hill Hospital on February 17 at the age of 77, had been a farmer all his life.
His parents had a farm on Monks Road, Charlesworth, but his father’s ambition was to take over Spray House Farm in nearby Little Hayfield.
Sadly his father died when David (pictured) was still a student at Glossop Grammar School, but mother and son moved in to Spray House.
It meant David leaving school at 15 to run the farm with this mum, the pair helping to make it the successful livestock farm it is today.
David and Lyn, his wife of 53 years, ran the farm up until the last few years when ill health forced David to take early retirement and his sons took over. But the couple stayed on to live in a home on Spray House land and David was always around to help out.
David had a love for sheepdogs and there have always been a few working the sheep at Spray House Farm and it was this that led him to establish the annual sheepdog trials there many years ago. It later became Hayfield Sheepdog Trials and Country Show.
When he was not farming, David was serving his community for more than 30 years as a member of High Peak Borough Council and Hayfield Pariah Council.
For many years, he was chairman of the borough council’s planning committee, gaining a reputation for his ‘plain speaking’ but always being fair.
His funeral is on Thursday (25 February) with a service at 11.30am at Hayfield Church, with Covid-19 restrictions in place. Committal will be at Spray House Farm on land that David loved.
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