RICHARD Neame, a former High Sheriff of Kent, as died at the age of 75. Mr Neame, of The Court House, Bishopsbourne, near, Canterbury, had been ill for some time.

Mr Neame leaves a widow, Anne, daughters Vanessa and Camilla and grandchildren Natasha and George. The funeral service will be held at St Peter and St Paul Church, Upper Hardres, where his parents are buried, next Tuesday (February 19) at 3pm.

Mr Neame was proud of the fact that he had followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming High Sheriff. His father, Lt-Col Cecil Neame, of Hardres Court, Upper Hardres, was High Sheriff in 1936.

Mr Neame, a former captain in the Grenadier Guards, was High Sheriff in 1987. Educated at Eton College, Mr Neame served in the Grenadier Guards from 1945 to 1953.

Farming extensively in Upper Hardres and Bishopsbourne, he moved in 1976 from the family home, Hardres Court, to The Court House where he farmed about 2,000 acres, mainly cereal, sheep and hops.

Mr Neame was very much a man of the country, with a particular love of trees, carefully nurturing existing woodlands on his estate and replanting, particularly after the hurricane in 1987, which devastated the stately avenue of beeches leading down into the village.

He was a member of the council of the Kent County Agricultural Society, a committee member of the Kent branch of the Country Landowners' Association, a member of the Society for the Protection of Rural England and of the Royal Forestry Society. He was also president of the East Kent branch of the Grenadier Guards Association.

Mr Neame was a member of the old Bridge-Blean rural district council before it merged with others to become Canterbury City Council, and had also been chairman of Bishopsbourne Parish Council.

He recently gave to the village the recreation ground in The Street, which has been named Neame Meadow in his honour.