Edgar Keatinge

Major Sir Edgar Mayne Keatinge CBE JP (3 February 1905 – 7 August 1998)[1] was an English farmer, soldier and Conservative Party politician.

An obituarist describes him as "a simple and loyal man who had, for a brief period, endured a significant role in national life; and discharged his duty with honour".

During the next ten years, he divided his time between the Territorial Army, local activism in the Conservative Party, and work in Risby on Reginald Burrell's farm.

[3] He was a member of West Suffolk County Council from 1933 to 1945, and was selected in 1938 as the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the Isle of Ely constituency,[2] to stand against Liberal MP James de Rothschild.

In January 1944 the Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds, Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Heilgers, was killed in the Ilford train crash.

[8] His father, Gerald Keatinge, had transferred to him the ownership of the family's 460 acres (190 ha) estate of Teffont Evias, near Salisbury in Wiltshire.

[10] The estate was in a ruinous condition after the war; large areas had been covered with concrete by the US VIII Bomber Command, all the hedges had overgrown enormously, and the Manor had been requisitioned for printing maps and the soldiers had stripped and sold the lead from the roof.

[citation needed] In Wiltshire, after recovery from severe peritonitis, he set about restoring the estate to good condition, though he was less successful in making it profitable.

He won the ensuing brief and unedifying dispute[2] and the planned housing was eventually built as an integral part of the neighbouring village of Dinton.