Come and meet Alastair Dick-Cleland. Alastair has worked for the Landmark Trust, one of the UK’s largest building preservation trusts, for over 20 years. The Trust specialises in rescuing buildings of architectural and historic importance, and then restores them to the highest standards as self-catering holiday lets, available to anyone to stay in. He is their Conservation Manager and looks after a wide portfolio of Landmark’s properties in the south and east of England. In addition, he has been responsible for managing the restoration of many new projects throughout the UK, ranging from a tiny schoolhouse on a remote moor in Dumfries & Galloway, to the 2014 Sterling Prize winner, Astley Castle in Warwickshire. He will tell us about a range of the different projects he has been involved with, illustrating their transformation from derelict and ruinous ‘at risk’ buildings to beautifully restored Landmark Trust letting properties.

Alastair grew up in a late 16th century farmhouse in Kent; currently lives in an early 17th century farmhouse in Caversham; and for 50 years has holidayed in a remote Welsh farmhouse - which still has no electricity or running water (and where his 80 year old father has now lived for over 20 years!).

14.30 in Haddenham Methodist Church, then Turn End garden.