Son launches £1,000 scholarship in memory of tractor enthusiast father

Posted 22 April 2016

A new scholarship for aspiring agricultural engineers is being offered at Harper Adams University, in memory of countryman and tractor enthusiast David Lawson. 

Announcing the David Lawson Scholarship, his son Dr Alastair Lawson said: “My late father, worked in agriculture all of his life.  He was born and brought up on a mixed farm near Biggar in the Scottish Borders. 

"It was here that he learnt his skills in stockmanship, and developed his fascination for all things mechanical, including milking machines, Standard Fordsons, Fordson Majors and grey Fergusons. 

"In the early 1950s he worked for LKL, a newly established relief milking service, travelling the country, before arriving at Holden Farm, near Winchester in Hampshire for a long weekend, but where he was to spend the next 60 years! 

"The farm had a herd of Ayrshire cows, and, using his contacts in Scotland, my father worked with the owner, Mr Corbett, to improve the blood lines. 

"Throughout the 1960s they enjoyed much success in showing, winning at the Royal London Dairy Show, the Bath and West, Newbury, Yeovil, The New Forest, Romsey, Gillingham and Shaftesbury, Fordingbridge, Royal Counties, Surrey County, Egham and Thorpe, Henley, Wokingham, Alton and Alresford. 

"Time moved on, and a commercial herd of Friesians replaced the Ayrshires, and my father milked with a ten/ten Hosier herringbone parlour until he was sixty-five.  He had a David Brown 780 Selectamatic that he used every day for more than 20 years.

"He continued with tractor work on the farm for many more years, mainly with 40 series Fords, before finally retiring and focussing on the restoration of our pride and joy, a 1950 David Brown Cropmaster."

"My father had a passion and affinity for all things mechanical. The David Lawson Scholarship will be awarded to those who share this passion, who avidly read Tractor & Machinery magazine and who count their Snap On tools among their most precious possessions.

“I should like to thank Harper Adams University for the opportunity to remember my father in this dynamic and forward-looking way, and I look forward to meeting the young people who will be helped in their careers in agricultural engineering and mechanisation by The David Lawson Scholarship.”

Preference for the David Lawson Scholarship will be given to students studying agricultural engineering. The award is to be valued at £1,000.  Eligible students will be advised of how to apply for the award in the 2016/17 academic year.