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Hugh Charles Fairfax-Cholmeley (24th February 1864 - 14th April 1940)
Hugh Fairfax-Cholmeley was Squire of Brandsby for 51 years, from 1889 to his death in 1940. He inherited his estate during a time of increasing difficulties for landowners, decreasing rents, decreasing land values and decreasing prices for agricultural produce. Educated at Oscott and then Oxford, Hugh became interested in the settlement movement in East London and signed up as a resident at Toynbee Hall in December 1888. At Toynbee, he first gained practical experience of social reform and made the contacts who sustained him throughout his work in Yorkshire. By the time he came into the Brandsby Estate, he was committed to social reform and to the overturning of 'the old order', as he put it. He believed that active reform was required to make the countryside a fit place for all those who lived in it, to improve agriculture and to stop the hemorrhaging of people to the towns. In 1903 he married Alice Jayne Moverly, daughter of his housekeeper and gardener.

During his life, he implemented successive reforms on his estate, starting with the institution of a Reading Room in one of the old cottages. This grew into a social club with sing-songs, dances and so on. He laid out a cricket field, build a cricket pavilion and established cricket club. He systematically improved the housing and farm building stock of the estate, creating his own design for affordable workers cottages, which he made available widely through the Rural Housing and Sanitation Association and The Builder. He improved working conditions for labourers, raising their wages and giving them a half day off on a Saturday and insisted on payment of overtime if they were required to work extra. He brought a water supply down into the village in the form of a standpipe near he cottages; he built a bathhouse and later a village or 'Town Hall' as he called it, which is still in use. He was instrumental in getting first the telegraph, then a telephone office at Brandsby, followed by negotiating a deal for cheap partylines for farmers.

His most lasting project, however, was the setting up of the Brandsby Dairy Co-operative Association, which despite early struggles grew into the Brandsby Agricultural Trading Association (BATA), which is still in operation today with 13 branches, though it is no longer at Brandsby. It remains one of the biggest providers of agricultural requirements in the West Riding. The success of the Co-operative was assured by his most popularised scheme in its day, which was the establishment of a transport link from Brandsby operated by the North Eastern Railway (NER) to Easingwold station. A depot was built at Brandsby and the NER provided one at Easingwold. Two NER steam locomotives ran each day between Brandsby and Easingwold, during the height of its operation. This project generated large national interest and was promoted as a model for other communities.

Through his interest in the Brandsby Co-operative, he became heavily involved in the promotion of rural co-operatives nationwide, through the Agricultural Organisation Society (AOS, a Westminster based non-party organisation for the promotion of agricultural reform though co-operative methods. Hugh was a founding member.  It became the government arm of agricultural development policy from 1901 until 1923, when government withdrew its grant to the organisation in a round of public spending cuts.  It folded in 1924, leaving rural co-operatives without a central body.  Through his work in Brandsby and nationally, he was very active in the debate on the future of the The Tenure of the Land.  He called for either a major reform to what he called the 'discredited Squirearchy' or change to a new system of small freeholders.  The debate raged right up to the second World War, but government dithering meant no decisions were ever made, land changed hands by default, due to economic conditions, and all except the largest and most stable of the old estates were broken up, laying the ground for our current system of business farming.

Hugh sold off Brandsby Hall and other important houses on the estate in the years 1911 to 1912 with about 1000 acres. He continued to manage and nuture the rest of his estate until his death on 14th April 1940, by which time income from the estate had dropped into deficit. He left five his wife Alice and five children. The estate was sold by his executors.

Early years
Hugh was born at a villa, Sans Souci, Posilipo, outside Naples, the family home of his mother Rosalie St. Quentin. His father was Captain Thomas Charles Cholmeley RN. As a baby he was taken back to Portsmouth by his family. His father, not wishing to go to sea once he had a family, served in the Royal Coastguard, doing a considerable spell at Kilrush in ireland, during which time, Hugh was left with his Aunt at Brandsby Hall, the ancestral home, together with his sister Rosie. During this period he developed that great love for the place which stayed with him all his life. On his parents return from Ireland, the children were taken away from Brandsby to Yarmouth and then Ripon. Captain Thomas was a fourth son, so never expected to inherit the Brandsby estate, but his three older brothers all died, and his nephew Francis who had inherited the estate from Thomas' eldest brother, Henry, unexpectedly died young in 1876, leaving no heirs. Captain Thomas therefore became Squire of Brandsby and Stearsby and at the age of 12 years, Hugh was overjoyed to discover that they were returning to live at Brandsby. In 1886, Captain Thomas also inherited the remains of the Fairfax Estate of Gilling and Coulton. He took the prefix 'Fairfax' to mark this state of affairs, and the family name became Fairfax-Cholmeley.

Capt. Thomas died in April 1889 at Bath, leaving his estates to Hugh Charles. However, he left any none land assets to his wife Rosalie and his other children, leaving Hugh with an estate of about 3200 acres, but no liquid assets. The estate was mortgaged to the tune of £33,000 and carried entails to provide for the support of the late Henry Cholmeley's sisters.