SULGRAVE MANOR TRUST BOARD OF TRUSTEES

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Carole joined the Board of Sulgrave Manor Trust as its Chair in January 2023 and her career is one of exceptional accomplishment. She has worked to great effect within and across the worlds of heritage, charitable funding, and higher education. 

A career civil servant, having worked at the Department of Health, the Department of Social Security (as it was then known) and the Cabinet Office, Carole was then appointed Director of Planning and Development at English Heritage, before running the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund for thirteen years. She was Master of St Cross College, Oxford, from 2016 until September of this year, is a Trustee of Horniman Museum and Gardens, Oxford Preservation Trust and Historic Royal Palaces (whose Board she currently chairs), and is a lay canon of Salisbury Cathedral. 

  Huw David is Development Director and Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, where since 2019 he has led the college’s fundraising. He was previously Development Director of the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford’s department for teaching and research in American history, politics and culture, where he managed the Institute's multi-million-pound fundraising campaign.

Huw’s interest in the Anglo-American history and relations that Sulgrave Manor embodies probably stems from a formative childhood visit to New England. Some years on, he now holds a doctorate in Anglo-American history from Oxford, working on transatlantic trade either side of the American Revolution. 

He is a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Benjamin Franklin House, London, and a judge of the Benjamin Franklin House literary prize, and has been a Governor of a village primary school.

Huw lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and young family.

Dr Sam Edwards is a Reader in History at Manchester Metropolitan University where he researches and teaches American history. Sam grew up in eastern England where he developed a fascination for the history and heritage of the US 8th Air Force, which was based in the region during World War II. This, in turn, has led him to explore the long history of US-UK connections, from memorials to the Pilgrim Fathers, to the details of presidential ancestry, to the unobtrusive markers recording distant transatlantic ties to be found in country churches. 

He is delighted to be supporting the important work of the Sulgrave Manor Trust, George Washington's ancestral home and an outpost of American history nestled deep in rural Northamptonshire. 

Sam is a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

  Stephen Hague is Associate Professor of Modern European History at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, where he is especially interested in architecture and material culture in the British Empire .Hiss current book project, provisionally entitled ‘Act Like Britain’: Politics, Architecture, and Aesthetics in Greater Britain, 1868-1968 examines the key role that architects, designers, and collectors played in Britain’s continued standing as a great power until well after the Second World War. This book deals in large part with Anglo-American cultural relations in the twentieth century, a topic of central interest at Sulgrave Manor.

Previously Director of Stenton, an eighteenth-century house administered by the National Society of The Colonial Dames, Stephen has consulted with museums and cultural organisations on interpretation and interpretive planning, strategic planning, fund-raising, and financial and organisational management.  

Stephen holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a Supernumerary Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Laura, a curator and university lecturer in Historic Preservation.

Caroline Hazard Goedhart has an engineering degree and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. She has over twenty years of diverse consulting experience including: strategic, operation and technology consulting with proven skills in mergers & acquisitions, corporate restructuring, financial analysis, and program management. This has included working with small, medium, and large companies across a variety of industries nationally and internationally.

She became involved in the Friends of Sulgrave Manor as Vice President in the fall of 2018 after serving for 6 years as a National Vice President for The Colonial Dames of America in The United States (NSCDA). 

What drew her to Sulgrave Manor was her love of history and the Manor’s compelling mission statement around the enduring relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Additional non-profit work has been with the Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Garden Club of America. 

Charbra Adams Jestin holds a seat on the Sulgrave Manor Trust as the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America Junior Representative. The NSCDA has been deeply involved with Sulgrave Manor since its creation as an historic house museum in 1914. A member of the NSCDA since 1984, she has served from 2014-2020 as the president of the NSCDA in the State of Connecticut, which owns and operates the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, CT, a complex of three 18th century museum houses where, for five days in May 1781, George Washington met with the French General the Comte de Rochambeau to plan their combined military campaign to defeat the British army in America.

After 34 years of teaching upper school Latin and Spanish, she comes to the Sulgrave Manor Trust with a passion for history, but now particularly for Anglo-American history.  The mission of the Sulgrave Manor Trust resonates strongly with her as it reinforces the British foundation in the creation of the democratic principles of the United States of America. The Sulgrave Manor Trust plays an important part in this history, and to be a part of its story is, for her, a tremendous privilege. 

Polly Montoneri is Counsel at Forsters LLP, Mayfair.

Polly was invited to join the Board of Trustees as legal advisor in January 2020, an invitation that she warmly accepted. As a rural property lawyer, she has particular interest in heritage property and the management of rural assets, and it is a privilege to be part of the preservation and success of Sulgrave Manor. 

She has relished bringing her expertise to Sulgrave Manor and also to have learnt about its history, appreciating the importance of the education and enhancement that it provides to the local community.

  Clive Preston,  a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, has had a lifetime of financial experience in both commerce and his own private practice. Brought up on a farm on the Claydon estate, he studied Geology at Oxford, worked in Australia before returning to qualify with one of the big four accountancy practices. 

As a former trustee of the Buckinghamshire Historic Buildings Trust as well as the accountant to several other charities, he has had wide experience of the charitable sector and was persuaded by a former Chairman and Trustee of Sulgrave Manor to bring greater financial acumen to the trust following the disposal of his practice and a move to a neighbouring village to Sulgrave. 

Working closely with the chief executive this has been achieved in the last four years and he has been actively involved in developing plans for the future, as well as the Trusts financial survival over the difficult Covid 19 period. Being the Trustee living closest to the Manor, he both helps in the Manor’s garden and liaises with the village Parish council

Sophie Wilson is currently Chair of Governors at Chenderit School in Middleton Cheney, but her background is in arts management. For many years, she worked at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham, where she was responsible for financial and performance management and fundraising. Before that, she worked for a number of arts organisations, including Rambert Dance Company and Shakespeare’s Globe.

She decided to get involved with Sulgrave Manor as she has been interested in its history since moving to South Northamptonshire nearly thirty years ago and felt that her professional skills and experience could be useful. She has particular expertise in audience development and income generation - both important issues for any visitor attraction. She also wanted to support a local enterprise and help build positive community relations.

She was concerned initially that she didn’t have any Anglo-American connections, but it then occurred to her that the two people who had had the biggest impact on her career were Sam Wanamaker at Shakespeare's Globe and Professor Richard Verdi at the Barber Institute. Both were American anglophiles, who made their lives here and campaigned passionately for heritage and the arts. Perhaps becoming a trustee of Sulgrave Manor was right for Sophie after all.