Introduction to
We have long since extended our membership from drapers to people of all trades. And still central to the Company is the belief that being a strong and friendly community makes us better able to help others.
Member of the Drapers’ Company
The Drapers' Company
The Company is governed by a Court of Assistants, presided over by an annually elected Master. The Court consists of the Master, four Wardens and a number of Assistants. Rather like a board of directors, it determines the overall strategy of the Drapers’ Company and oversees the progress of our business and investments. The Court is also responsible for our grant-making strategy, ensuring best practice and compliance with Charity Commission guidance. The Court of Assistants is supported by a Court of Wardens and a number of committees covering investments, finance, charities and membership. All our committee members are volunteers drawn from among our 750 members. The Company’s Clerk, rather like a Chief Executive, leads a small senior management team and a staff of around 30.
The Drapers' Company
The Master and four Wardens are elected from the Court and serve for one year from August to July.
A new Assistant is elected to the Court each year from the Livery usually serving as Junior Warden in their first year. After serving on the Court for some years, an Assistant becomes eligible for election as Second Master Warden, Master Warden, and finally as Master of the Company.
Master
Patrick Beddows family involvement with the Drapers’ Company goes back as far as 1785. He joined the Company in 1993 and was called to the Livery in 2001. Patrick has been a Governor of Thomas Adams School, Chair of the Adams Foundation, Chair of Governors of Drapers’ Pyrgo Priory Primary School and Vice-Chair of the Drapers’ Multi-Academy Trust Board. He has also been a member of the Investments Committee and Finance and General Purpose committee. He was elected to the Court of Assistants in 2015 and served as Junior Warden in 2015-2016.
Patrick was born and brought up in Shropshire. He was educated at Rugby School and read Land Management at the University of Reading. He is a chartered surveyor and partner at Knight Frank, specialising in strategic land management, tax planning, development land and large portfolio valuations. He has been President of the Midland Counties AVA and a Council Member of the CAAV. He has served as both a national and regional committee member for the CLA and is currently vice-chair of the Leicestershire and Rutland branch. He chairs a charity founded in 1658, which supports those in need in his local area and acts as a Director of various property and farming related companies.
Patrick lives in Leicestershire and is married to Andrea. They have two children, Edward and Rosie, both Drapers’ and working in London. He joined the Army Reserve on leaving school, serving for 20 years, with the Sussex Yeomanry and Royal Wessex Yeomanry, finishing his career commanding a mixed Squadron of regulars and reservists. He continues an involvement as a trustee of The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars.
Patrick's interests include the rural and built environment, family golf, fishing, shooting and attempting to train his Labrador. He supports Leicester Tigers and Wolverhampton Wanderers. He is a qualified NSRA Range Officer and coaches Pony Club triathletes.
Master Warden
Philip has a long-standing family connection with the Drapers’; he joined the Company in 1979, and was called to the Livery a half dozen years later. He has served on each of the Standing Committees, and currently chairs the grant-making panel of THEFNW (the Thomas Howell’s Education Fund for North Wales). He is also the self-appointed captain of the Drapers’ Bridge team.
Philip has a particular interest in music. Both his parents were professional musicians, and as a small boy he was a chorister in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral. Some years later he judged that attempting to make a career as an opera singer was unlikely to work out well, so went into the City; however he continues to be very active in amateur, mostly choral, singing, and is also frequently to be found at any one of several opera houses.
After 20-something years in investment banking, which included two stints in the US – in Dallas and in New York – he made a career switch into the world of philanthropy. For 15 years he served as Director of the Linbury Trust, the grant-making charitable trust established by the late Lord (John) Sainsbury of Preston Candover (the eldest of the 3 brothers who gave the Sainsbury Wing to the National Gallery) and his wife Anya, Lady Sainsbury; and for the last 5 years he has held a similar position at the AKO Foundation, a charitable foundation established by the Norwegian investment manager Nicolai Tangen (who now runs Norway’s sovereign wealth fund). Philip also serves as a trustee of a smaller grant-making trust, the Steel Charitable Trust, and sits on the advisory board of Greenwich Hospital.
Philip and his former wife have twin girls: Emily, a journalist, and Philippa, a theatre director and playwright.
Second Master Warden
Tim joined the Drapers’ Company in 1988 and was elected a member of the Court of Assistants in 2018, having first served as a governor of Bancroft’s School and then, for 8 years, as a member of the Company’s Charities Committee. After joining the Court he served on the Investments Committee and then, most recently as a trustee of the Drapers’ Multi-Academy Trust in Harold Hill, Havering: first as Chair of the Finance Risk and Audit Committee and then as the Board Chairman.
During a 27-year career in the Army, as a member of the Royal Anglian Regiment and then the Cheshire Regiment, Tim spent a considerable amount of time abroad. He lived in Germany on 3 separate occasions and completed operational tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Hong Kong and Bosnia. He commanded 1st Battalion The 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment from 1993 to 1996 and then Old College at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the following 2 years, He ended his uniformed service in the multi-national headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where he led a 65-strong contingent of staff officers, responsible for Land and Air operations. His final appointment was in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, where he worked in Corporate Communications. He left the Army in 2002.
Tim’s second career was spent in Not-for-Profit organisations. He was the UK Director of Emmaus for 8 years: an International charity which helps to rehabilitate homeless and other socially excluded people living and working in communities underpinned by social enterprise. He joined the East Anglian Air Ambulance in 2011. During his tenure as CEO, the charity became the first in the UK to operate a day/night helicopter-borne emergency medical (HEMS) service. After 3 years as chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), an organisation with more than 192,000 members, Tim reverted back to the charitable sector as the interim Commercial Director of Action on Hearing Loss: formerly and now, once again, known as the RNID. He retired in 2020.
Married to Christine, a retired Primary School headteacher who then worked for Ely Diocese as Head of School Performance, Tim lives in rural Cambridgeshire. He was and still is, albeit as a spectator now, a keen sportsman. Like Tim, Chris is heavily involved in the local community, as a Parish Councillor and a member of a variety of different organisations. Two of their children are members of the Drapers’ Company, maintaining a family tradition that has continued unbroken for more than 200 years.
Renter Warden
David joined the Company in 1982 and became a Liveryman in 1986. As a Liveryman he served, for a few years on the Company’s Charities Committee and 10 years as a governor of Thomas Adams School, Wem in Shropshire. Following his election onto the Court of Assistants in 2008, he has served as a governor of Howell’s School, Llandaff and as Chairman of the Thomas Howell’s Education Fund for North Wales, one of the Drapers’ charitable trusts.
After Radley College and Edinburgh University, David’s career has been in marketing services, particularly in research and strategy within the WPP Group. With a focus on older demographics, he became a director of Age Concern Enterprises. He then founded a home care business in the Southwest with the aim of keeping older people out of care homes as long as possible! This led to him being a director of the UK Homecare Association which has been both intense and fascinating during the Covid pandemic.
Like his father, who was elected Master in 1992, David has a long association with the Drapers’ church, St Michael’s Cornhill, through bellringing and a love of choral music.
David is married to Miranda who works in the Vice-Chancellor’s office at the University of Oxford, and they live near Cirencester. He has two sons who are both members of the Company: one is a media lawyer and the other is in the Army. Any spare time gets taken up with house renovation, gardening and, if he’s lucky, fishing.
Junior Warden
Benedict joined the Drapers' Company in 2001 and was called to the Livery in 2015 and joined the Court of Assistants in 2024. He has close involvement with the Drapers' Multi-Academy Trust, firstly as a Governor of the Drapers' Academy from 2015 and subsequently as Chair of Governors of Drapers' Pyrgo School and then as interim Chair of the Drapers Multi-Academy Trust where he remains a Trustee to date. He is currently serving a second period as a member of the Charities Committee.
After a spell working in the City, Benedict followed his heart's passion into teaching, having taught in Le Puy, France as part of his degree. He has 30 years’ experience working in schools. After 10 years in senior boarding schools, Benedict moved into the prep world and was a head teacher for 16 years in country boarding schools and in London day schools. Since 2022 he has worked at Westminster Under School where he is helping co-ordinate the school's move to full co-education from September 2026. He is also an experienced serving inspector and has an extended overview of the education sector from 3 – 18.
Benedict is married to Elizabeth and has three children, Camilla, Henry and Caspar, who work in London.
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