High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! On 16 May, 1783, the Odiham Agricultural Society was inaugurated as a 'society for the encouraging of Agricultural and Industry in their town and neighbourhood'. The activities and influence of some of its key members was to result in a far more important outcome: the foundation of the veterinary profession in Britain. The Society had 47 members initially, drawn from 'Gentlemen of Rank, fortune and Ingenuity' plus some 'intelligent farmers'. Amongst those founding members was Thomas Burgess, son of the local grocer, Winchester and Oxford scholar, who became Bishop of St David's, where he founded St David's College, Lampeter before being translated to Salisbury