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This year's Marts the Heart Awards New Auctioneer of the Year winner Eleanor O'Neil was surprised and delighted to win the award.

She says: "The British Farming Awards was a fantastic event and it was nice that the winners were announced on the night, making it such a surprise. I did not expect to win as there some really strong candidates."

Eleanor's journey into auctioneering has not followed the usual path, but she has always had a passion for farming and auction marts.

Growing up on the family farm in Bowland, Lancashire, she was keen to go to market with her father, enjoying the whole experience, and later working as a drover and clerk in various markets during her teenage years.

But a career in hospitality beckoned and she worked her way up to management level, but at the same time, she always stayed involved in agriculture through Young Farmers' Club and helping at shows with dairy cattle, which is how she met her husband Denis.

This resulted in moving to Northern Ireland for 10 years, with Eleanor supporting Denis in his cattle show and sale preparation business, which further ignited her love of dairy.

In 2018, the couple, who by then had two daughters - Johanna and Leonie - moved back to help on the family farm and Eleanor needed a ‘school hours' job.

This led to her working at Gisburn auction market as a clerk, but once again bitten by the ‘auction bug', she soon began to take on more hours and responsibilities, moving to be dairy clerk for former dairy auctioneer Fred Spurgeon.

They worked together to grow the already popular dairy sales at Gisburn, particularly on the pedigree side, and Eleanor began to think that auctioneering was perhaps the career she wanted to pursue.

She began by selling dairy youngstock and some sheep and, when Fred announced he was retiring, was persuaded to apply for the job.

In the meantime, Eleanor took the livestock auctioneer and market management course at Harper Adams, achieving her ALAA qualification.

Eleanor says: "I was thrilled to be offered the job and thank Tom Greenow, Gisburn's market manager, for supporting me while I learned the rostrum duties, but after Fred retired, I took full control of the sourcing, cataloguing and marketing of dairy sales."

Rollercoaster

Since taking on the role last year, Eleanor says it has been a ‘rollercoaster' of learning and achievement.

Dairy numbers have continued to grow with an additional catalogue sale added each month. Records are continually being broken, both in terms of numbers sold and prices achieved, and Eleanor has enjoyed getting to know buyers and sellers and understanding their requirements.

She is also involved in the wider market and is willing to step into any position when needed, whether that be auctioneering, clerking or in the office, as well as promoting the mart on social media.

She says: "I am a people person and there are a lot of similarities with my previous career, as meeting and talking to people are important parts of the job.

"We have made lots of improvements at Gisburn and have a young team which is driving the market forward.

"We want to encourage more people to come to the live auction, which is why we have not gone down the online bidding route."

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