I never thought as a sport obsessed teenager attending Wolstanton Grammar School I would end up working half a mile away from where I spent many happy hours running round the sports field and games barn! After school, I trotted off (with a bag full of naivety!) to Manchester University to read German. Appalled at the horrors of 18th Century German literature I frantically searched around for a more vocational course and stumbled into Law thanks to a football colleague! After a 4 year sojourn in sunny Manchester, I took a short trip along the M56 to Chester Law School where I realised an interest in the legal profession did actually involve some hard yakka.
Article clerkship (yes pre-training contract days!) followed in the City in London with Taylor Wessing (in their then guise of Joynson Hicks… oh the happy memories). Thanks in no small part to the best sports coaching mentor I ever came across (Graham Williams, I tilt my hat to you!) I decided property was where I wanted to specialise. Apart from Graham’s influence, I think the fact I could actually do it played a large part in my decision!! I’ve stayed in property ever since and have no regrets whatsoever. People care about the environment in which they work, the image their premises portray and it has offered me great scope to specialise in areas which I genuinely find on the whole hugely engaging. Leaving London to venture back north to Manchester, I found myself largely isolated from other property expertise and found solace in books. I had nearly 4 wonderful years in Manchester before coming across Knights. Firstly at a party and then through a transaction with Tony Bell and, hay ho, before you know it, I am back in North Staffordshire looking at a very exciting future for a bunch of people who I immediately recognised as very different from those I had come across in the legal profession elsewhere. I have been here since 1991 and can’t believe my luck…!
I have continued to specialise in property and have been fortunate to have a book published, first by Butterworths and then Tottel which on the whole seems to have been fairly favourably received. I know the trainees and younger lawyers find it very useful. I sometimes read it and cannot think I ever wrote the words…! I also co-edited Ross: Commercial Leases (the landlord and tenant Bible!!) I have also done some external lecturing for Central Law Training and for Staffordshire University.
My love of sport endures, having played lots of football over the years, tennis, cricket and following on from my son’s brushes with meningitis, have run a number of marathons (Stoke, Nottingham, London, New York) for the Meningitis Trust. However, I am probably best remembered for failing to complete the Three Peaks Challenge, getting altitude sickness coming down Scafell Pike and not making it to the top of Ben Nevis! Thanks guys… You know who you are!! My love of sport continues and I do a lot of cricket coaching having coached the Staffordshire Under 10s and am currently, coaching the Cheshire Under 16s County team.
I have been involved in a lot of charitable work locally and have been a member of the Moorlands Charitable Trust, Bentilee Community Housing and currently am a director of the Potteries Preservation Trust. As part of the latter organisation, we have recently ensured, through lottery and other funding, the successful renovation of 6 bottle ovens in the City of Stoke-on-Trent. Our heritage must be maintained. Once I learned, whilst walking round my home town streets, to look up, the penny dropped that there was an awful lot worth preserving…