Flying visit by HRH The Prince of Wales

Posted 25 July 2018

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales made a flying visit to the Harper Adams University campus yesterday.

Following official engagements in nearby Staffordshire in the morning, Harper Adams provided the landing site for the Queen’s Helicopter Flight as Prince Charles arrived in Shropshire to conduct private business.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Mills welcomed His Royal Highness to Harper Adams. “It was my great pleasure to greet The Prince of Wales,” he said. “We briefly discussed the development of a new postgraduate certificate in Plant Health and Biosecurity, which Harper Adams will be offering from this September, something which was of particular interest to the Prince, given his concern to protect plant and trees species from pests and diseases.

“This was also a theme of Prince Charles’s visit earlier in the day when he saw the Action Oak Initiative, a major new campaign to protect the UK’s oak trees. His Royal Highness had also visited the University of Birmingham’s BIFoR FACE woodland research project in Staffordshire.”

In February this year, The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall presented the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education to Vice-Chancellor Dr David Llewellyn, and Head of Agricultural Robotics, Professor Simon Blackmore.

The University is accustomed to welcoming the Queen’s Helicopter Flight thanks to regular visits by its Chancellor, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. The Chancellor last visited in May this year for a Commonwealth agriculture conference and a celebration marking 200 years since the birth of the University’s founding benefactor, Thomas Harper-Adams.