The Team

My work background is in accounts but this is not where my heart was or is, design and development was where I really wanted be. I loved the landscape and how it changes with both the natural and human input. Surveying was my first choice,  however I left school the year before the sex discrimination act came in and nobody would take on a girl school leaver, so being good at math I ended up doing accounts. All things happen for a reason and this gave me a good grounding for my business life.

After a career in London, my husband David and I moved temporarily to Hastings then to the Welsh boarders. As long as we were together we feared nothing and our moto was always if this doesn’t work we will just do something else. Failure was never an option as we didn’t view life that way, moving forward was always a wonderful challenge to be met together.

We had our two beautiful sons when we had very little but this never mattered as our life was always full of love and we always had what we needed, which was roof over our heads, food on the table and each other. We didn’t feel hard done by in any way, life wasn’t hard just a challenge to negotiate.

We started our first business which evolved and grew fast and had lots of employees many of whom became like sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Each expansion of the business wasn’t necessarily about earning more money, more this is a great opportunity to achieve something. Like all businesses it had its ups and downs and eventually ran its course and we decided that it was time to visit a project that had been on our minds for many years.

During this time David had developed his IT business which I helped with too. I had been involved with computers while in London, inputting data for a holiday company and then in my next job migrating an accounting system from paper to computer possibly one of the first companies to do this in both cases.

So we sold our house and bought a derelict Victorian school, converted half into a home and the rest into an IT and conference centre. Doing a lot of the work ourselves. We always had dreams beyond our purse and enjoyed the physical work to achieve our ends. For me this was always about design and development and that if we could imagine it, it could be done.

This brings me to Caer Bryn, the vision we both had as teenagers to live in the countryside hills. Another project and our last together, in 2005 we bought a 1970s bungalow and built from it a beautiful contemporary home, barn and outbuildings.

We had finally come home, to our spiritual home in the hills of Wales. From the moment we saw the view we knew this was where we needed to be and this is where Our story ends but mine continues. I lost David in 2022 to lung cancer, mesothelioma, asbestos in his lungs from work in London. I was lucky enough to be able to nurse him at home and be with him every step of the way. I was also caring for his mum in her 90s who had been living with us since COVID.  

We had had such plans for what we would do in the future together but I suddenly found that had all been swept away. I needed to find out who Sue was on her own and after two years I realised she wasn’t so different but instead of having David by her side he resides within never to leave.

So now I live for both of us and every day is an opportunity to share what we learned over our 48 years together. The hills and the peace of Caer Bryn has helped me find the strength to embark on this new project with you. My aim is to bring some stillness into your life so you can see a clear way forward which is about the design and development of your future.