New President of Royal Welsh
The Lord Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan, Mrs Kathrin (Kate) Thomas of Gelli Hir, Nelson, Treharris, has been elected president of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society for 2009. Mrs Thomas, who is only the fifth woman to become president of the society in the 105 years since its formation in 1904, takes over the office during Glamorgan’s year as the feature county at the Royal Welsh Show.
Educated at Cheltenham Ladies College and the Sorbonne in Paris, Mrs Thomas, whose father was an orthopaedic surgeon in Cardiff, has played a leading role in civic affairs in South Wales.
A magistrate, she was High Sheriff of Mid Glamorgan in 1986-7, made a Deputy Lieutenant of the county in 1990, Vice Lord Lieutenant in 1994 and appointed Lord Lieutenant in 2003. She worked with the Prince’s Trust Cymru for 14 years for which she was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, and is a former chairman of Mid Glamorgan FHSA, Mid Glamorgan DHA and Bro Taf Health Authority.
Mrs Thomas is Patron of the 203 (Welsh) Field Hospital (V) of which she was Honorary Colonel from 1998-2006 and she was Vice President of Mid Glamorgan Red Cross from 1977-83.
Although recently retired from active farming Mrs Thomas, together with her husband, Edward Thomas, ran Gelli Hir for nearly 40 years until his death in 2006. The farm was mainly dairy with a Holstein herd, and sheep, originally Nelson-type Welsh Mountain but more recently Beulah which were crossed with Texel. For a number of years they also finished turkeys for the Christmas trade.
Although brought up in a town, Mrs Thomas’s paternal grandmother was from an extended farming family in the Vale of Glamorgan and her maternal ancestors farmed in Shropshire where her great grandfather was factor to the Beckwith Estate at Eaton Constantine, near Shrewsbury.
The new Royal Welsh President is chairman of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Mid Glamorgan and is an ex-officio member of the Court of the University of Wales.
She has two sons – Richard, who farms in Devon, and Rob, a solicitor in Cardiff.
Other lady Presidents of the RWAS were in 1947 HRH Princess Elizabeth when the Royal Welsh Show was staged in Carmarthen; 1979 – Lady Marion Phillips (Pembroke-Dyfed); 1980 – Mrs R.W.P. Parry (Brecon-Powys) and 1997 – Hon Mrs Sian Legge-Bourke (Brecknock).