DENIS Carter - Lord Carter of Devizes - the Cockney lad who became a farmer and Chief Whip in the House of Lords, died this week at the age of 74.

Born in Elephant and Castle, south London, the son of a tea warehouseman and a cleaner, Lord Carter had his first taste of the country when he was briefly evacuated to Dorset during the Second World War.

His father Albert rented a sweetshop in Hove, Sussex, where the young Denis spent his formative years and met his future wife, Teresa Greengoe.

It was during National Service in the Suez Canal Zone he came up with the idea of living in the country but a move into farming after the war was not as easy as it seemed and he found himself working for the credit reference company Dun and Bradstreet in the City of London.

Finally, he broke into agriculture, working on a 60-acre farm in Sussex.

He said: "I was an urban working-class lad who knew nothing about farming, but I asked a lot of questions and read a lot of books."

He attended the East Sussex College of Agriculture where he won the Queen's Prize of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

As Denis was preparing to wed Teresa in 1957, a letter arrived from Wilfred Cave who, with John Rowsell, had been trying to set up an agricultural firm in Hampshire.

The subsequent interview in a muddy field was a huge success and the first farm consulting business in the United Kingdom started out in a converted poultry hut.

By 1965, the Carters had prospered enough to buy their first home in Andover.

His political career began around this time as he worked for Brian Tilley, the Labour candidate in Basingstoke during the 1964 General Election that saw Harold Wilson's Labour government returned to power.

Mr Tilley invited the Carters to Devizes, where he lived and was mayor, and they fell in love with the town, moving there and finding premises for the agri-business AKC at Parnella House in the Market Place.

They subsequently set up home in Potterne.

Denis continued his work with the Labour Party and in 1986 was sounded out by the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, as a member of the House of Lords as a spokesman on agriculture.

He took his seat in 1987 and ten years later, when Labour entered Government again, he was made Chief Whip in the Lords.

Although he stood down from the post in 2001, he continued his work in the Lords on his agriculture portfolio.

He and Lady Carter have been stalwart supporters of arts organisations in Devizes, particularly White Horse Opera and Devizes Light Operatic Society.

Sadly, their family life has been dogged by tragedy. Their children Andrew and Catherine were born with the same congenital defect which rendered them blind and hard of hearing.

Andrew also had a heart defect and died in 1982 at the age of 19. Catherine, who carved out a career for herself in political administration, died in September 2004, aged 44.