Who’s Who?
Trustees of Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust
Colin Brady
Appointed Trustee 30th April 2025, appointed Chair of the Board 18th June 2025.
Colin Brady, originally from Ireland, lived in Dorset for twenty years where he worked alongside churches and charities to strengthen communities and develop responses to social need including food poverty, homelessness and inequality.
He has been an adviser to several grant-making trusts and now works in Oxford where he continues to enjoy making connections between potential donors and the people who may be able to make a lasting difference in the world.
Frances Cambrook
Appointed 15th June 2023, Frances has lived and worked in Dorset for over thirty years, settling in Tolpuddle in 2004. After a varied career in mainstream higher education including Bournemouth University and Foundation Degree Forward, she started her own business as a higher education consultant in 2011, specialising in work-based education and training.
Frances has worked with clients across many business sectors, but found her niche working to support a partnership of Anglican cathedrals in developing specialist in-house training for cathedral stonemasons. This aligned perfectly with her interest in the built heritage, conservation and the preservation of traditional craft skills, and what started as a short project with an informal group has now grown into an education charity funding and delivering training to thirteen English cathedrals including St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey.
Her interest in supporting the work of TOCT revolves around the element that unites the restored chapel and cathedrals, namely traditional building craft skills. Frances says, ‘the village is so fortunate to have such a unique building in its midst, but it couldn’t have been conserved and restored as it is has been without the traditional skills of the masons and other craftspeople who worked on it, and their understanding of the techniques and materials used by the Dorset labourers who originally built it. It is vital that these skills are retained, and it is a privilege to be able to play a part in the revival of the Tolpuddle Old Chapel which is both a national and international asset.’
Hannah Jefferson
Appointed 15th June 2023
Hannah brings with her over 15 years’ experience in the heritage sector, having worked with the National Trust in a variety of roles including Youth Volunteering, Visitor Experience and in her current role of General Manager running a dispersed team who care for 37 NT sites in Dorset.
Her commercial experience began at Intel where she looked after major corporate clients and more recently with her husband with the establishment of a successful farming, farm shop and campsite business which they run day to day.
Hannah says, ‘I am passionate about small and unique buildings and the big stories they have to tell. With the completion of the Old Chapel restoration, following many years of committed hard work from so many, I am absolutely delighted to be joining the team of trustees and volunteers to help Tolpuddle Old Chapel put down strong financial roots and develop its potential as both a bookable venue, but also as a pivotal part in the story of Tolpuddle Labourers.’
Lorraine Tillbrook
Appointed 1st September, 2023
Lorraine Tillbrook has lived in Dorset for fifty years, bringing up a family of three children with her husband. For the past 11 years they have lived in the heart of Tolpuddle.
Lorraine worked as primary school teacher for over sixteen years in Dorset schools, including special education. She has also worked as a horticulturist, setting up her own plant nursery and specialising in hardy geraniums and heritage plants. Currently, she works for Mencap, combining her educational and horticultural skills in working with students on garden design and horticultural courses using the Asdan syllabus. She has seven years’ experience as a Parish Clerk, and has an extensive record of fund-raising for a wide range of charities.
Lorraine is an accomplished musician and fiddler, specialising in English folk music, and known for her work in the music groups, Rainbarrow, and Claude and the Cats. She has a particular interest in the dance tunes of the Hardy family manuscript collection, and she also arranges and composes. In July 2020 during the pandemic, Lorraine led the token TUC Festival march through the main street as part of the ‘Digital Tolpuddle Festival’, which inspired the folk-singer, Rob Johnson, to write the song, ‘Fiddler in the Rain’.
She has nurtured an enthusiastic love of heritage buildings, archaeology and wildlife. She looks forward to greeting visitors to the Old Chapel as well as working through music to tell the story of the building and the Tolpuddle Labourers who built it.
Robert Patterson
Appointed October 2024
Robert Patterson is a retired accountant and has occupied senior and Directorial positions in the public sector. He was a Director in Barnado’s UK between 2005 – 2015.
Robert has an interest in heritage transport and is a volunteer on the Swanage Railway, being Chair of the Company and Commercial Director between 2022 – 2024.
Robert moved to Tolpuddle in 2023 and is a Parish Councillor.
Andrew McCarthy – Founder Chairman of Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust 2014 -2023
Heritage Ambassador for TOCT
Andrew grew up and was educated in St Albans. In the seventies and eighties he taught Environmental Science in Hertfordshire. Following educational research at The University of East Anglia he spent the last 15 years of his career as Head of Science at a secondary school for children with special educational needs in Stevenage.
In 2006 Andrew and his wife moved to Tolpuddle and he became interested in the former Methodist chapel after reading a letter in the Blackmore Vale magazine. For over nine years, Andrew guided the trustees and volunteers through the complex and challenging process of founding Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust as a registered charity/Building Preservation Society and then purchasing the building and site.
He coordinated two community surveys, the recruitment of new trustee and volunteers, the appointment of the architect, the preparation of our planning application, sourcing the required funding and working with two project managers and our contractors to see the Old Chapel finally renovated and open to the public. Andrew retired as Chair in July 2023 and now works as ‘Heritage Ambassador’ for the Trust.
Volunteers
Professor Philip Martin
Chair of the Board 13th July 2023 – 31st March 2025
Philip is a retired academic and Professor Emeritus of Literature, Sheffield Hallam University, from where he retired as Pro Vice-Chancellor in 2014. He worked as an academic in six British universities, and the second half of his career was spent in senior management and executive positions. He also held roles on a number of national committees and policy bodies.
After retiring, he worked for a while as a consultant in the university sector, and also served as an independent governor on the Board of Bath Spa University. An established scholar and writer, Philip has published widely in the field of literary studies, and currently undertakes historical research on the context of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
He says, ‘Having completed the first vital stage of our mission to save the Martyrs’ legacy through the successful renovation of the Old Chapel, we move now to the second stage which is to preserve and encourage the sustainable use of the building as a distinctive heritage site and a local amenity with a strong identity and educational purpose. We want people to be inspired by the history of this building, and we also want it to be used for the general benefit of the local community as well as visitors.’
Brent Shore
Brent is a retired teacher of Modern Languages who has lived in Tolpuddle for over thirty years. In addition to volunteering at the Old Chapel, he has spent many years helping to run the community library in Puddletown. Since retirement from the classroom, he has devoted much time and energy to writing fiction and he has self-published several novels, both contemporary and historical.
He would regard himself to be very much an amateur historian; his research has been mainly based around 19th century working-class life in his home town of Hyde, near Manchester, and yet in spite of the industrial/agricultural dichotomy there are clear parallels to elements of the Dorsetshire Labourers’ story.
Phil Drake
Phil is Dorset through and through. His family lived in the same nearby parish (Hilton) for many generations. His maternal grandfather, Job Thorne, was the village carpenter and wheelwright, and a Methodist lay-preacher who walked to neighbouring chapels to preach the Gospel on Sundays. His great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Drake (born1784) was an agricultural labourer and a contemporary of the Dorset Martyrs.
Phil too has a farming background but left working the land to join the Dorset Constabulary. He served for 31 years mainly as a Detective (Special Branch). His second career was as a Public Rights of Way Officer with Dorset County Council. With the benefit of this background, he has researched paths which would have been used by the Tolpuddle Martyrs. As part of the National Trust ‘People’s Landscape Project’ (2019) Phil led walks from Tolpuddle to Dewlish on the bridleway George Loveless almost certainly used when he preached at Dewlish Chapel. This is also where George Loveless met his future wife.
Phil’s TOCT guided ‘Two Chapels Walk: In the footsteps of George Loveless’ which can be found here.
Phil’s wide local knowledge and network of contacts is a great help to TOCT, and he has been a volunteer with TOCT from its earliest days.
Ian Cray
Ian moved to Tolpuddle from Trowbridge, Wiltshire with his family in January 2014, and became a volunteer after meeting the then Chairman of the Trust, Andrew McCarthy in 2018.
His background includes Electronic Engineering; Electro/Mechanical Engineering; UK, European and International colour copier and printer training and support. After taking redundancy Ian set up his own video recording business mainly focusing on wedding videos, and he also and spent the final few years before retirement working as delivery driver for Waitrose, Dorchester.
Ian’s main volunteer responsibility has been the production of media and he has produced over 125 short videos charting the renovation of the Old Chapel from the start of the work to its completion which can be viewed on the TOCT X (Twitter) page. He also video-records the Old Chapel’s series of talks which are regularly posted on the website, and videos of historic interest that are shown as projections in the Old Chapel to visitors.
He has recently embarked on a new project with the title ‘Tolpuddle Now and Then’. Working with a small team of photographers and historians this project has chosen a series of old photographs of Tolpuddle which are then complemented by up to-date photos of the same location. These will be made into a sequence illustrating the changes to the village across time. Ian is also integral to our Oral History project, recording interviews of some of the older members of the community about their own personal history. These recordings, with the permission of the interviewees, will be made available to people interested in local history, and offered to the collection of such histories stored at the Dorset History Centre.
Martin Pendergast
Martin is a retired teacher who now takes pleasure in the rural life and history of west Dorset, and the enjoyment afforded by exploring the many footpaths and walkways of the local countryside with his dog. He is a long-standing volunteer in TOCT who handles the Chapel’s booking processes and also works as a steward for openings. He has an abiding interest in the restoration of the original Martyrs’ Chapel which had been abandoned for many years, and sees it as an authentic and valuable addition to the cultural life of Tolpuddle and the surrounding district. He also notes that it is also a peaceful and quiet place to reflect in the heart of the village.