Former Iron Club President John Godfrey CBE's memorial service will be held at Lincoln Cathedral today.
Tributes will be by John's brother Jim Godfrey OBE, and Lincolnshire agricultural chaplain Canon Alan Robson.Intercessions will be by Air Vice Marshal G. Mackay, Julian Hargreaves, Professor M. Stuart, His Hon Judge Morris, Rev. A Wright and Canon A. Robson.
Readings will be by Digby Scott and Jeremy Bartle. The service, will be attended by Her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.
The service will be at 2pm, followed by light refreshments in the Chapter House.
John passed away last year at the age of 67, and was a director of the Iron for ten years between 1994 and 2004 before taking on the role of President in 2007.
John qualified as a chartered accountant in 1971 before returning to the family farming business, which went on to be managed by John and his brother Jim, and more recently his nephews Alexander and Sam.
The business, which has pig enterprises totalling 6,500 sows, farms land in an area that stretches from the Wash to north of the Humber. In 1998 he was awarded the CBE for services to agriculture.
He chaired the British Pig Association, for which he was awarded the first ever lifetime fellowship by the National Pig Association (NPA) in August 2015, and was also the key driver in creating English agriculture's first fully integrated farm assurance scheme, covering not only pig production on-farm but also feed, transport and processing.
He negotiated the English pig industry's classical swine fever welfare disposal scheme in 2002, which was a first in the United Kingdom, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Agricultural Societies in 2004. In 2007 he was president of Lincolnshire Agricultural Society.
A freeman of the City of London and a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Farmers, John was also High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 2010 and 2011. At the time of John’s passing, he was Deputy Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.
He was appointed to the board of the University of Lincoln in 2002 having previously been on the board of Lincolnshire Agricultural College at Riseholme. John was awarded an honorary doctorate at University of Lincoln within a graduation ceremony in Lincoln Cathedral in 2009.
Despite all this success, he remained a loyal, lifelong supporter of the Iron and, during Steve Wharton's time as Chairman, was the club's second biggest shareholder.
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