After an illness of more than two and a half years, a prominent agriculturist, Mr. Leonard Parsons, J.P.,of Manor House, Irchester, passed away on Friday night at the age of 64.

In May of this year, owing to ill-health, he relinquished his seat on the Northamptonshire County Council to which he was elected unopposed in1937 for Irchester and Wollaston.

Mr. Parsons was a member of a farming family, and for some years had given valuable service as a member of the committee of the Northamptonshire Agricultural Society. He was associated with the Northamptonshire branch of the NFU, being formerly a member of the Executive Committee. He was chairman of the branch in 1930, and had the distinction of being the first chairman of the Wellingborough branch when it was reformed just before the Great War. He was made a Justice of the Peace in 1938, and sat on the Wellingborough Bench. For 20 years he was a member of Irchester Parish Council, of which authority he held the chairmanship for a number of years. Mr. Parsons was also a vice-chairman of  Wellingborough Rural Council and in 1937 succeeded Dr. W. W. Robb as a member of the Nene Catchment Board. He was elected unopposed as a county councillor for Irchester and Wollaston in 1937.

When a young man, Mr. Parsons was a noted athlete, cycling being the sport in which he excelled. He won innumerable prizes in cycling events and early in the century won outright a particularly handsome solid silver trophy given by a manufacturing firm.

In the year 1901 Mr. Parsons won prizes to the value of £425. His favourite sport in recent years was shooting.

A native of Irthlingborough, Mr. Parsons was the son of the late Mr George Parsons, of Mere House, Irthlingborough. Besides the widow, two sons and a daughter are bereaved. They are Mr. R. H. Parsons, Lieut. J. S. Parsons, R.A., now in Karachi, India, and Mrs. E. P. Crowther-Green, of Hollesley Bay, Woodbridge, Suffolk.

The funeral was at Irchester Parish Church on Tuesday.