My fellow trustee, Chris G..

Helena and I drove to Woodchester Mansion after lunch today for a short visit. I'd arranged to take another in my series of portraits of my fellow trustees of the Stroud Preservation Trust, which we need when preparing our Annual Report for the imminent AGM. As I will be going away tomorrow, I’d established with Chris G. that today would be the only time we could meet up.

Chris G. is also a volunteer at the Woodchester Mansion Trust which now looks after this amazing building, that is the centrepiece of an estate now managed by the National Trust. Do check out its amazing story on their website here. 

Helena and I arrived on the minibus that takes visitors down the one mile track from the car park. On arrival I quickly found Chris, who was the Duty Manager for the day, and we went outside to grab a couple of pictures. Then we went inside to their office so I could sign the paperwork for the accountants to submit as the Preservation Trust's annual accounts.

Chris is a retired Building Surveyor, whom I met when he worked on the town council's redevelopment project  of Lansdown Hall in the centre of town. I oversaw the project committee when I was a councillor for about ten years. subsequently he agreed to join the trust and has been a formidable part of our team bringing his very careful practical skills to our work. I think he does much the same work for the mansion.

Woodchester Mansion is an unfinished, Gothic revival mansion house in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, England. It is on the site of an earlier house known as Spring Park. The mansion is a Grade I listed building, which was abandoned by its builders in the middle of construction, leaving behind a building that appears complete from the outside, but with floors, plaster and whole rooms missing inside. It has remained in this state since the mid-1870s.
The mansion's creator William Leigh bought the Woodchester Park estate for £100,000 in 1854, demolishing the existing house, which had been home to the Ducie family. A colony of approximately 200 greater horseshoe bats reside within the attic of the mansion, and have been studied continuously since the mid-1950s.