Frank Carr

Frank Carr was a fourth-generation hill farmer at Lee Gate Farm in Malhamdale, in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, who became one of the best known young voices of British hill farming before his death at the age of 35 on 25 September 2026.

With his family he farmed more than 2,000 acres of owned and rented land high in the Dales, running a substantial beef and sheep enterprise with around 250 breeding cows and 1,300 breeding ewes, as well as store and finished cattle. He returned to Lee Gate after several years away for further education and travel, and in 2023 told Farmers Guardian that the heritage of the farm was what drew him back and that he wanted to carry it on.

The farm sits in some of the most demanding agricultural country in England, and Carr never pretended otherwise. In his interviews and features he talked about the weather and the markets, the cost of investing in a hill farm and the challenge of making a living from land of that kind, while making clear how much the landscape and the generations before him meant to him. Farmers Guardian, which visited him several times, said he had a deep connection to the farm and its history.

Carr shared his working life generously with a wider audience. He was a #Farm24 campaign ambassador for several years, helping Farmers Guardian show the reality of modern farming and the people behind the nation's food, and he took part in the paper's Next Generation Hill Farmers series, which followed his efforts to secure the future of the family business. Friends from the campaign remembered his humour and his photographs of the Dales.

His story reached a television audience when Adam Henson visited Lee Gate Farm for BBC One's Countryfile. Walking the fields and checking newborn lambs, Carr spoke candidly about the unforgiving Dales weather, the pressures of hill farming and his hopes for the future.

Farmers Guardian announced his death in early October 2026. No cause of death has been made public. Editor Katie Jones said he represented the very best of the next generation, committed to his family, his livestock, his land and the future of British farming, and called his loss at just 35 immeasurably sad. He was a father, and tributes came from across the farming community and from viewers who remembered him on Countryfile.

He will be remembered at Lee Gate and across the Dales as a farmer who loved the land his family had worked for generations, and who took the trouble to explain that life to people who would never see it for themselves.