Challenge Cup comes full circle

Anglia Farmer online, March 31

Youthful enthusiasm and valuable experience have helped a Suffolk farm win a prestigious award. Judith Tooth reports.

It was only when Dennington Hall Farms was awarded the King George VI Memorial Challenge Cup by the Suffolk Agricultural Association that winning farmer Robert Rous discovered a family connection.

“We had entered the competition before, and I had always seen it as the King George VI Cup,” he says. “We were delighted to win it, but it was only then I realised it had been presented to the association in 1952 by my uncle, the 4th Earl of Stradbroke. So it’s particularly pleasing: it has the Rous coat of arms on it, so one feels it’s come home!

“We’re in the habit of taking the farm staff to the annual awards dinner in October, so we were all there when the winners were announced.”

Dennington Hall Farms won the class 3 category for farms of more than 400ha in the association’s annual farm business competition, and also the special award for Best Conservation Farm in that class.

The judges, this time all alumni from Harper Adams graduating the same year as Honorary Suffolk Show director, Bee Kemball, visited the farm last June tasked with choosing winners from some very individual farms across the county. 

Read the full story on the Anglia Farmer website