TRIBUTES have been paid to a respected member of the equestrian community who will be remembered as "a man who loved life, laughing and a good joke".

Jockey, farrier and raconteur Brian Webber died aged 73 at his Roche home on January 7 after a three-month battle with lung cancer and a brain tumour.

More than 200 mourners, including nearly 20 farriers, turned out to remember Mr Webber at his funeral and service of thanksgiving at St Gomonda's Church, Roche.

Born in Devon, Mr Webber moved to Cornwall when he was 12. As a teenager he rode rodeos across the region before carving out a notable career as a jockey and a horse trainer.

Taught by some of the most reputed professionals in the West Country, he later became a highly-regarded farrier and dedicated more than four decades to the craft, continuing to shoe horses weeks before his death.

Inquisitive and fascinated by antiquities, his family will forever remember him as an "exceptional man" who "loved all aspects of life and the land".

He rode at Newton Abbott, Exeter and Fontwell Park, West Sussex, racecourses.

"One of his unfortunate claims to fame was he was due to ride in the Grand National of 1968 but he fell out with the owner of the horse a couple of weeks before," said his eldest daughter Beverley Ellis.

"He was a humble man, not a person who would put his hand up in the air and say 'here I am' but hugely respected by a lot of people," said Mrs Ellis, 48, who now lives in Ontario, Canada.

Mrs Ellis, her daughter Bryoney, 10, Mr Webber's younger daughter Lynne Keifer, 44, who now lives in Portugal, and her two daughters Rebecca Merelie, 17, Holly Merelie, along with Mr Webber's younger sister, Joan Webber, carried him into the church – making it the first funeral in Roche with all female coffin bearers.

A great storyteller, Mr Webber's love of the countryside and hunting – which saw him ride with many packs across Cornwall, Devon and Somerset – eventually led him to London.

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In 1997, aged 59, he was Cornwall's leader in the countryside marches held in protest against Tony Blair's hunting ban Bill, walking 325 miles from Madron, Penzance, to London.

"He was very proud of that," Mrs Ellis remembers.

He moved from Lanjeth to Roche in 1999, after the break-up of his second marriage to Anita and soon became a familiar face around the village on his trademark tricycle.

At 67 he narrowly escaped death when he was hit by a car in Roche on his way home from work. He was saved by a mechanic working nearby and taken to hospital in the air ambulance with 57 breaks from his right hip to his left knee, nearly losing both of his legs.

Peter Combellack, 51, of Crown Road, Whitemoor, was friends with Mr Webber for nearly three decades after the two met at a hunt.

Mr Combellack said Mr Webber was deeply respected and loved a laugh and a joke. "He will be hugely missed by the hunting and equestrian community."

Margaret Hawke, whose husband Robert owns Hawke Butchers in Roche, said: "Brian was a popular person in the village."