New Freemen

New Freemen Rosie Bird Charlotte Pienaar

Dan Clarkson

The Tylers and Bricklayers have had an ever-warming presence in my life for as long as I can remember. As a child, my grandparents would recount the Company’s events, the companionship it offered and the charity with infectious enthusiasm. My father Past Master Dr George Bird echoes the same strong sense of purpose and belonging and being lucky enough to join the Company through patrimony, I hope to follow in this well-trodden path.

I was born in Glasgow so have some claim to Scottish roots but grew up and was schooled in Kent. I went on to study Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh specialising in my final year on Neurodegeneration and Immunological response in Alzheimer’s Disease. From there, I went on to do a research fellowship at King’s College London before joining the graduate programme at GlaxoSmithKline. I was fortunate to gain a wide range of experience starting out in the discovery division of Research & Development, moving on to large scale manufacturing and finally, I went to the Lake District in 2020 to support a primary antibiotics manufacturing site. On finishing the programme, I moved back down South and currently work as an Industrial Hygienist at GSK in the development and introduction of new products preparing for early phase clinical trials which I enjoy immensely.

In my free time I’m a keen runner, beekeeper and have aspiration to start water skiing. I also cannot resist Baroque music and am thrilled live concerts and masterclasses are back up and running. Looking forward to many years of T&B to come.

I grew up in a village close to Cambridge, attending St Mary’s School and later university in Newcastle. Taking business studies I went on to start my own cleaning company back in Cambridgeshire, at the weekends and in the evenings helping my father (Ian Wilson) to do admin roles in our family business Anglian Brickwork Ltd.

After recovering from a health scare my father told me it was time to “come into the fold”. I agreed and the construction family business expanded by a generation. I have the role of Finance Director and my mother and father are Company Secretary and Managing Director.

My passion at Anglian Brickwork Ltd is to aid the next generation of bricklayers. The skills of artisans are easily lost and we try to give the newly trained bricklayers professional development and the chance to work using the traditional materials such as lime mortar. We initially used the local colleges for all our training but more recently have started doing it “in house” – from level 1 NVQ in trowel occupations through to levels 2 and 3. It is fantastic that apprenticeships and encouraging the next generation is mirrored by the Tylers and Bricklayers.

I was admitted to the company during the pandemic via zoom. My father is proud and pleased that I have joined, as Ian is a freeman of the City of London and a liveryman of the Company. The companionship and fellowship have been shown to me by my father and I am looking forward to attending events as a member of the T&B.

I am married to Andre, a managementchartered accountant, and we have a four month old baby Annabelle. Outside of work I play golf, run and enjoy gardening.

I am joint Managing Director at Lee Marley Brickwork (LMB), the largest brickwork and scaffolding business in the UK with offices in London, Reading, Glasgow and Leeds.

Educated at Bedford School, University College London and City University. I have been fortunate to have a varied career mostly working for myself spanning recycling, building conservation, and now construction. In 2011 I had the opportunity to invest in an old friend’s business, LMB, to help grow the scaffolding business and take advantage of the London construction market’s move to ever taller brickwork tower blocks. Lee Marley and I have together grown the business from £17m in 2011 to a predicted £55m in 2021. We have continually developed our training offering to become the largest employer of apprentice bricklayers in the UK, also developing our own graduate programme.