Wiltshire Groups and Trustees/Board Members

The Wiltshire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England has a central office in Devizes and is split into the four geographical groups listed below. Each group deals with district and parish issues and then comes together collectively to address county issues.

Dame Sarah Rose Troughton DCVO – Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire and President

Dame Sarah Troughton is His Majesty The King’s representative in Wiltshire and took up the post of HM Lord-Lieutenant in February 2012. She lives near Swindon with her husband Peter and they have three children and nine grandchildren. She has held several voluntary positions both within and outside Wiltshire for a number of years and was particularly involved with the Community Foundation for Wiltshire and Swindon and Youth Action Wiltshire. She maintains a keen interest in all aspects of life within Wiltshire as a whole, including council services, commerce and industry, the Armed Forces, along with many voluntary, community and charity groups and organisations. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the New Year’s Honours List on 30 December 2024.

Anne Henshaw – Chairman

Trustee

Anne has lived in Wiltshire and been a member of CPRE since 1980. Born and bred a country girl on the Welsh Borders she joined CPRE because of her concerns over loss of hedgerows, public rights of way and traditional agriculture with the creeping industrialisation of our fields through the agribusiness. These grew over the years to wider concerns about the villages and their communities, the spread of urbanity, the loss of greenfields and the growth of tarmac as the answer to economic problems.

Engaged with several community groups in the Calne area where she lives, these include Calne Area Transport who have created a Transport Strategy for the area, Calne Our Place who have created a strong tourism profile through VisitWiltshire and the Combined Parishes Rights of Way Group based on the Cotswold Wardens scheme

Any spare time is spent in her large garden which was created from an arable field on the top of a very windy hill thirty years ago.

Geraldine White – Administrator

Geraldine was born and educated in London, where her father was the Deputy Chief Officer of the London Fire Brigade. After her parents retired to Wiltshire in the late-70’s she moved to join them.

She started work for the Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service as a Control Room Operator and quickly worked her way up through the ranks to become a Senior Control Room Operator. In 1996 she joined DOPRA in Chippenham as a Tester on Fire Brigade products. Eventually she became a Principal Bid Manager, initially in the Public Safety arena and then ICT Managed Services, looking after public sector tenders worth many millions of pounds. The role included a lot of travel and long days.

Geraldine elected to take redundancy in early 2016 when she joined CPRE Wiltshire where she is in charge of all branch administration. She and her husband David live in Rowde and have four daughters and four granddaughters, who they dote on. Besides her family, her interests include the countryside, walking, yoga, reading, travelling and gardening.

Mike Manson – Project Officer

Mike was born in Guildford, Surrey and has a MA in Engineering Sciences at Cambridge University. He was a career soldier in the Royal Artillery, retiring as a Colonel in 2008 having been based in England and Germany. He went on operations in Northern Ireland and on exercise in many countries. He spent his final nine years in the Ministry of Defence as a programme manager firstly for Army management information and then for Defence Medical information. From 2009 he was a management consultant until joining CPRE Wiltshire in 2015. He has lived in Wiltshire since 1993, firstly in Shrivenham, then in Wilton and now in Bratton (near Westbury) since 1999.

He works part-time and his main tasks with CPRE Wiltshire are to run the Best Kept Village Competition, to manage the website and to manage membership. When not doing this he is a volunteer worker for many aspects of his village and he also rows stroke for a Masters VIII at Bradford-on-Avon Rowing Club.

Anthony Cohen – Treasurer

Trustee

Anthony is a retired Chartered Accountant, having spent over forty years as a partner of a substantial West Country accountancy practice until his retirement in 2012. There he had a large and diverse portfolio of clients including many farmers, commercial businesses and charities. He had a particular interest in capital taxes, trusts and private clients. He has lived in the countryside almost all of his life, having been brought up in an old farmhouse in Staffordshire and having moved to Wiltshire in 1973. He has a degree in Economics, Accountancy and Law from Sheffield University.

Anthony has been a trustee of several charities over the years and was the Chair of Governors of Swindon College for a time. He was a local parish councillor of Chiseldon and was a trustee and the Hon. Treasurer of The Merchant’s House in Marlborough from 2009 until late 2022.

Culminating in early 2022, he was much involved in securing the eventual refusal of a planning application for a housing estate in his local hamlet. The proposed estate was surrounded by listed buildings and the hamlet is in a conservation area located in an AONB.

He is married with two adult sons. He and his wife are keen travellers and he is a car enthusiast with a lifelong love of classic cars and rallying.

Philippa Gray

North Wiltshire and Swindon Group

Chairman – Mrs. Anne Henshaw
Tel: 01249 816182

Email: annehenshaw@freeuk.com

(for personal background see “Chairman” above)

Hon. Secretary – Post vacant – volunteers wanted

Philippa Gray

Trustee

Philippa grew up in North Yorkshire in a farming family and was educated at the local state schools before going to the Royal Agricultural College to study Rural Estate Management. She subsequently qualified as a chartered surveyor and worked for two of the large national firms as a land agent dealing with the sale of large country houses and farms.

She then became Regional PR Officer for the Countryside Alliance in the East Midlands and was later involved in direct national campaigning including for rural Post Offices, against fly tipping and promoting British farming, as well as defending country sports and the rural way of life. This involved working with and organising volunteers

Philippa currently works with her husband, James Gray, who was the MP for North Wiltshire until July 2024.

She sits on the Board of the Wiltshire College and University Centre with special responsibility for the Land Based Courses at Lackham. She has some input on the direction the courses take towards a more environmentally sustainable industry.

Philippa has three grown up children and lives in the midst of rural Wiltshire on a small, but not commercial, farm. Her hobbies include walking, riding, gardening and local and national history.

Nick Stokes

Kennet Group

Chairman – Mary Gilmore

Secretary – Sophie Roberts

Email: kennetcpre@googlemail.com

Nick Stokes

Trustee

Nick Stokes was brought up in Bath, and lived in Wiltshire in the 1980s before returning to the county in 2012 when he retired. He spent some 45 years in various marketing and strategic roles including being Marketing Director of Lloyds Pharmacy Ltd for 7 years, having previously held senior roles at Boots the Chemist, and Marketing and Development Director at Coventry University where he led the repositioning of the University such that it is now the highest ranked and largest ex-Poly in the UK.

Nick was also a Non-Executive Director, and latterly Acting Chair of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust for ten years, and was also a Trustee of the Coventry Museums Trust. Since retirement, he was elected to serve on Worton Parish Council in 2017, is heavily involved with the Worton Neighbourhood Plan and was the Seniors Captain at North Wilts Golf Club in 2019, where he is still a member of the Seniors Committee.

Nick’s particular interest and specialism in countryside matters is the preservation of the Green Belt and the usage of brownfield sites to meet housing need. He has led the opposition to a major development outside the village boundary in Worton, which heaps been rejected twice but has now gone to appeal, and, as such, has become expert on planning law. He will be using this expertise to advise CPRE Wiltshire across the county, while also providing guidance on the use of marketing and market research in the future.

South Wiltshire Group

Chairman – Heidi Poole

Email: heidi_poole@yahoo.co.uk

Heidi Poole

Originally from Somerset, where she grew up on a small holding, Heidi moved to Wiltshire in 2001. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in rural estate management and worked as commercial property surveyor for a number of years.

She has long held an interest in the planning system, and currently works part time as a Planning Advisor for Dorset CPRE in addition to being a member of the Salisbury Civic Society Development Committee.

A keen horsewoman, in her spare time, Heidi trains and competes in the equestrian sport of Dressage.

Michael Hodges

Trustee

Michael was born in London in 1952. After reading Modern History at Balliol College Oxford he joined Morgan Grenfell in 1973. From 1997 to 2012 he worked for HSBC. He was Chairman of the Middle East Association in 2010-12.

Michael has lived in Wiltshire since 1992. He married the Hon. Veronica Addington, from Highway Manor, Calne in 1992. Michael set up the Friends of Wiltshire Churches in 2008 and is a Trustee of the Wiltshire Historic Churches Trust, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, has been a Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire since 2012 and a Chancellor of the British Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta since 2012. Michael is also a Trustee and Vice Chairman of the Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust and a Governor of the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust.

He is determined to do his best to help preserve Wiltshire’s rural heritage.

West Wiltshire Group

Chairman – Post vacant

Hon Secretary – Ken McCall
Tel: 01225 761092
Email: sandraandken@hotmail.co.uk