Dr Christine Gill spent years helping her parents run the family farm, only to be told she had been cut out of their will. She spoke to Hannah Chapman yesterday after she decided to publicise her situation.

POTTO Carr Farm sits in rich agricultural land near the small village of Potto, on the edge of the North York Moors.

Valued at £1.5m, the rolling fields and fertile soil will prove an attractive investment, even with the current depression surrounding the farming industry.

For Dr Christine Gill, it is not only about the monetary value, it is about keeping the arable farm in the family.

From the age of 13, she helped to drive tractors and pick potatoes on the farm.

Even after she left for university, she would return at weekends and in the holidays to help.

In 1986, Dr Gill and her husband, Andrew, bought White House Farm, a property adjoining Potto Carr, with the help of her parents so they could be closer to the farm, combining their jobs at Leeds University with farm work.

With the birth of their son, Christopher, in 1997, and the declining health of her parents, Dr Gill began to dedicate more hours to the farm.

When her father, John, died in 1999, she also began to spend more time looking after her mother, Joyce, who suffered from a range of phobias and did not like to leave the house.

Mr Gill had left everything to his wife, and Dr Gill did not take up the issue with her mother.

She said: "I felt that parents had a right to enjoy their property without children snapping at their heels.

"I never had a reason to suppose I would not inherit the property eventually."

Only days after her mother's death, in August last year, the contents of her will were discovered. The news was a terrible shock.

Not only had the farm been left to someone else, it had been left to the RSPCA, a charity that Dr Gill had never heard either of her parents express any support for.

She said: "My parents never wrote a cheque to the RSPCA.

"My father used to allow the local hunt to send their dogs onto Potto Carr land. My mother used to criticise the RSPCA for their stance against hunting.

"There was no evidence in my mother's behaviour towards me that she wanted me to have nothing, and nothing in my father's behaviour towards me when he was alive."

The clause in the will excluding her stated: "I declare that no provision is hereby made for my daughter Christine Angela Baczkowski because I feel that she has been well provided for by me over a long period of time."

Dr Gill said: "The use of my husband's surname was strange as I never changed my name on my marriage.

"Perhaps they did not like my husband being half-Polish or perhaps they did not like him, and yet they were happy to have him helping them do jobs in their house or on the farm.

"We were working on the farm because it was a family farm. We worked there because we were part of the family and were helping the farm to survive and because one day we expected we would pass the farm on to the next generation.

"I am left feeling that, as a girl, I have been used as a dogsbody on the farm. I find it hard to believe I would have been disinherited if I had been a boy. My parents had plenty of scope to make a substantial donation to charity without disinheriting me so completely that nothing was to be left to me, not even any family mementos."

Neighbours and contractors who have worked on the farm over the past 20 years have voiced their shock at the bequest.

Steve Dawson, who farms at nearby Thorn Hill Farm, said: "She must have been devastated when she found out. It must be terrible, especially with the increase in land values in the past 12 months."

Many people have written letters to support a legal challenge to the will, including Phil Armstrong, from Yarm, near Stockton, who carried out vermin control work at the farm for 20 years.

Last night, he recalled a conversation with Mr Gill before his grandson was born.

He said: "Mr Gill said if he did not have any grandchildren to leave the farm to, he would leave it to a dogs' home or cats' home.

"A few years later, Christopher was born and I thought everything was okay.

"He had a lot of ill health and he must have forgotten all about it."

Mr Armstrong, who knows Dr Gill by her middle name, Angela, said: "In summer, Angela and Andrew were always there working on the farm. This must have come as a big shock, especially for Christopher."