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Cheltenham office on the move
Lisa White from Barnett Waddingham's Cheltenham office recounts the history of the team's move across town.
When the Cheltenham office opened back in 1996 it would have been hard for the original 21 staff to envisage outgrowing the Quadrangle, however, five years and a more than a doubling of the team later that is exactly what we did. The time had come for us to move.
Moving an entire office is no mean feat but with Clare Tomalin overseeing the project it all ran smoothly. The search for premises had actually started back in early 2001 and after much deliberation and cogitation it was decided that St James’s House, St James’s Square was to be our new home. Still in the centre of Cheltenham this larger office would provide us with much needed space for future expansion and offer better facilities for meetings and seminars. Not forgetting increased car parking!
After weeks of preparation, extremely lengthy planning meetings and long debates over where the apostrophe in St James’s House should go we finally said goodbye to the Quadrangle on 14 December. During a day on which you had to keep moving otherwise you were liable to be placed in an orange crate and loaded onto the removal van we packed everything - even a pair of trousers (probably best not to ask) and kept our fingers crossed that on the Monday we would be able to find it all again.
What better way to relax after such a hectic day than to go to Cheltenham’s Christmas party - an annual event so renowned that we even had a few gate crashers from the London office. This year’s festivities took the form of a meal at a local restaurant then off to actuarial student Nick Griggs' nearby flat for a game of "how many people can you fit into a one-bedroom flat" and to party on into the wee small hours of the morning. As always, our resident photographer Ben Roach was there to record the event and here is one of the 176 photographs he took that night.
As planned, it was business as usual on Monday 17 December. Out IT team had done a fantastic job with the computers and our only real problem, apart from getting used to the new telephone system, was to work out which of the four meeting rooms was which (which is not a bad problem to have when you have been used to only having one!). After unpacking the orange crates and returning the trousers to their rightful owner all that was left to do was to celebrate our first day at James’s House with a glass of champagne and a toast to the new office and all who sail in her!
Lisa White, February 2002.