TRIBUTES have been paid to a former councillor and NFU chairman who has died, aged 87.

Justin Mallinson will be remembered as much for civic contributions to a county he loved as for his farming.

He was a former president of the Melplash Agricultural Society, chairman of the Dorset NFU, a Dorset County Council member and a Burton Bradstock parish council chairman for 25 years His widow Judy said: “Every letter we have had has said he was a kind, courteous, gentle gentleman.

“He loved photography and would use any excuse to get his camera out.

“He loved shooting, he loved the countryside and he loved England.

“He was a gentleman of the old school and would treat everyone, duke and dustman, exactly the same.”

Mr Mallinson adored his family but lost son John to cancer in 2006. He leaves behind Mrs Mallinson as well as a daughter, six grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Mr Mallinson, who was involved with Bridport Youth Club, was a founder member of Bridport’s Twinning Association and was the original chairman of the Millennium Green Trust. He was Bridport Rotary president twice, getting both the Paul Harris fellowship and its highest honour, the Paul Harris Sapphire award.

Mr Mallinson was born in Woodford Green in Essex on September 28, 1923, the third of four children.

He went to Cheam School, where he was slightly junior to Prince Philip and where later his own son was slightly senior to Prince Charles.

Mr Mallinson went on to Marlborough School and then Cambridge to study architecture, which he did for two years before being commissioned into the First Battalion Kings Company Grenadier Guards in 1942.

He met his wife Judy – they would have celebrated 67 years of marriage this June – at a dance. He was 20 and thought the blonde Land Girl the most beautiful he had ever seen.

She remembers him as handsome, kind – and argumentative. They married on June 2, 1944, taking a weekend honeymoon in Guildford before he was shipped off to active duty in France.

A series of health disasters saw him in hospital – with a bayonet wound, a bad appendix followed by double pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism.

No one held out any hope but he always credited a visit from Judy with giving him the incentive to fight for his life.

When he was demobbed in 1946 he told the army resettlement board he wanted to be a farmer and he was sent to Bredy Farm in Shipton Gorge – the only vacancy in the whole country.

When he saw it he said he had found the place where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

It was run down, had one cold tap, no electricity and an outside toilet but over the years Mr Mallinson transformed it into a successful and award-winning dairy and arable farm.

He won accolades for his conservation work and the design and construction of his farm buildings, which included his own saw mill.

He was buried in an oak coffin with wood grown and sawn on his beloved farm.