Over 200 people attend farmer's funeral (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Over 200 people attend farmer's funeral

FARMER and vintage farm machinery restorer Rupert Cove was buried on Saturday with full agricultural honours when his coffin was taken to his funeral on a flat bed farm trailer, pulled by a vintage tractor.

The service, at St Bartholomew's Church, Winstone, near Cirencester was attended by over 200 people, many of whom had to stand in the churchyard.

Rupert Cove's death, said neighbouring farmer and friend Malcolm Whitaker, who gave the tribute, marked the end of an era since he had been at the very centre of the centuries old farming community which had now almost disappeared.

He would always help his neighbours and mend their machinery when it broke down.

His main claim to fame, having survived a savage attack by a bull in the 1960s, was in all matters connected with vintage farm machinery and he had an old self binder and threshing machine with which he cut and threshed thatching straw all over the West Country, including for Prince Charles at Highgrove House.

He owned four vintage tractors and the one which brought his coffin to church was an International 10/20, bought by his uncle in 1932 in part exchange for a Morris Bullnose car. Rupert still had the invoice, and the spanners in the toolbox were the original ones.

As well as being Winstone's answer to Fred Dibnher, he was a true "man of the soil," well aware of the privilege of belonging on the Cotswolds.

The rector, the Rev John Jessop, who took the service, pointed out that Rupert Cove's life had spanned a huge chunk of farming history.

He had started working with horses and finished up driving a huge combine harvester.

The service ended with the hymn "We plough the fields and scatter," and Rupert Cove was buried overlooking the fields where he had ploughed, sown and reaped for most of his life.