Farming in the North Pennine Dales

Eric Wilson - Profile

George Eric Wilson was born in Barnard Castle in County Durham in England in 1921. He went to the local school and on leaving at age 14, he went to work at Gainford as an apprentice joiner. In 1940 he volunteered for the Royal Air Force and spent most of the war in India and Burma. After demobilisation in 1945, he went back to his hometown and started work as a fitter in an agricultural engineering business, later advancing to become salesman.

In 1967, Eric, his wife Nancy (from the same area) and four sons came to Hamilton, New Zealand to work for Bisleys Agricultural Engineering Company. In his retirement he turned a lot of both New Zealand and exotic timbers into beautiful objects of art, and talked of his farming days up the Dales which Northumbrian Clive Dalton encouraged him to document. The result is some priceless agricultural history. Eric died in 2007.