Father's threat to give farm to dogs (From The Northern Echo)

Father's threat to give farm to dogs

10:23am Wednesday 23rd July 2008 in

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A FARMER who left the family farm to the RSPCA said he would give everything to a dogs’ home if he did not get a grandchild, a court was told yesterday.

Christine Gill is challenging her mother’s will, which left the £2.4m Potto Carr Farm, Potto, near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, to the animal charity.

Lawyers for Dr Gill claim the university lecturer’s “domineering” father coerced her mother, who it is claimed had mental health problems, into signing the document.

Dr Gill’s parents, John Arthur and Joyce Gill, signed mirror wills in 1993, which left the farm to each other and then to the RSPCA if they both died.

Mr Gill died in 1999, but Dr Gill only found out she had received nothing when her mother died in 2006.

Philip Armstrong killed vermin on the Gills’ farm for 20 years. He told the High Court, in Leeds, yesterday about a conversation he had with Mr Gill before Dr Gill and her husband, Andrew Baczkowski, had a son, Christopher, now 11. He said: “I said I couldn’t wait to be a grandfather.

“He (Mr Gill) turned to me and said he would love grandchildren to leave the farm to.

“He said that if it didn’t happen, he would perhaps leave it to the dogs’ home.”

Mr Armstrong said he thought Mr Gill had been joking.

He suggested the elderly farmer had signed the will leaving everything to the RSPCA before Christopher was born, and had failed to change it after his birth because of poor health.

Brian Robson, from High Worsall, near Yarm, farmed next door to the Gills before they bought the farm at Potto.

In a letter submitted to the court, he said he was amazed at hearing the couple had left everything to the RSPCA.

He said: “To me, this was so out of character with the man I knew.

“I cannot imagine that the Mr Gill I knew and respected would have worked to deny his grandson the chance to follow in his farming footsteps.”

William Wardman, from Yearby, near Redcar, who managed the Gills’ farm when their health deteriorated, said: “I never got the impression from Mr Gill that the farm wasn’t to carry on in the family.”

The case continues.