Lakshan Saldin

Trustee and director. Chair.

Lakshan has lived in Charlton for over twenty-five years and is a former councillor for Charlton Hornfair ward on the Royal Borough of Greenwich. He is a former trustee of the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust and of the Museum of the Broads in Stalham, Norfolk, and is currently a trustee of the Greenwich Homeless Project. He is a chartered chemical engineer with over thirty years of international experience in engineering, project management and technical advisory work across the energy and infrastructure sectors, and a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and of the RSA. He holds a BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bath and a Master’s in Project Management from the University of Manchester. He is a director of Knova Ltd and Agilis Services Ltd, and a subject matter and testifying expert with Hanscomb Intercontinental. Earlier in his career he held senior engineering and project management positions at AMEC, WorleyParsons and Xodus Group. He chaired the Conservation Management Plan tender panel.

Lara Ruffle Coles

Trustee and director.

Lara lives in Shooters Hill, close to the Rotunda, and has watched the building deteriorate. She was one of the first people to support the campaign to save it, stemming from a great personal interest in architecture and history. She is a community campaigner and a QA engineer in the technology industry, with over a decade of experience in software testing across web, mobile and desktop applications. Before moving into technology she spent eight years in project, technical and account management within home entertainment and international distribution. She holds a BA (Hons) in Popular and World Musics from the University of Leeds, where she ran live music nights as President of BandSoc. She sings with Lewisham Choral Society, where she is also a trustee and runs the choir’s website and social media, and is a trustee and chair of the Parents and Friends Association at her children’s primary school.

Mick Essex

Trustee and director.

Mick is a civil servant at the Department for Business and Trade, where he is Deputy Head of Civil Maritime. He co-chairs the department’s Business and Trade Historians group, convened its Open House programme in 2024 and 2025, and was a co-organiser of the 2025 Departmental History Symposium with Queen Mary, University of London. The department’s London headquarters, the Old Admiralty Building, stands close to the Carlton House site where the Rotunda was first erected in 1814. He holds an MA in Early Modern English and French History from Birkbeck, University of London, and a BA in History from the University of Leicester, with research interests in military, naval and institutional history of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, twentieth-century political history, and local history. He has lived in Woolwich for over twenty years and is a member of the Friends of the Royal Artillery Collection and the Navy Records Society.

Commodore Jonathan Lett

Trustee and director.

Jonathan grew up in south-east London and has lived in a Grade II listed building on Shooters Hill since 1994. A frequent visitor to the Rotunda as a young child when it housed the Royal Artillery Museum, he joined the Royal Navy in 1989 and, after training at Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth, began a 37-year career deploying across the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and the Sub-Antarctic. Seagoing commands included the patrol vessels HMS MERSEY and HMS CLYDE and the frigate HMS MONTROSE. Promoted to Commodore in 2020, he exercised joint command over British Forces South Atlantic Islands from the Falkland Islands. His most recent appointment was as Deputy Director (Policy) at US Pacific Command in Hawaii. Jonathan holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College London, with interests in military history, colonial and military architecture, Antarctic exploration, and the UK’s South Atlantic territories.

Dr Nigel Fletcher

Founding Patron No. 01.

Nigel is a political historian and writer, and was a councillor in the Royal Borough of Greenwich from 2005, serving for many years as the opposition spokesman for culture and ending as Leader of the Opposition from 2020 to 2022. During this time he spent four years on the board of Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum, whose collection had been housed in the Rotunda for almost two centuries. Nigel holds a PhD in political history from King’s College London, where he taught on the Politics and Contemporary History MA for seven years and remains a visiting fellow. He is co-founder of the Centre for Opposition Studies and the Ken Young Memorial Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London. He has published on British post-war political history and the UK constitution, sits on charity boards in heritage and culture, and is a member of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives. His support secured the framed relics of Nash’s tent of 1814, the first object in the Trust’s collection.

Tim Barnes MBE KC

Founding Patron No. 02.

Tim is a King’s Counsel and a Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn, whose practice at the Bar was in fraud, terrorism and homicide cases. He chairs the St George’s Garrison Church Trust, which is conserving and restoring the Garrison Church opposite Woolwich Barracks. He is a former Chair of the Greenwich Society, with which he remains involved, on the planning side. He is involved in coaching the University of Greenwich Mooting Team (which won the nationwide University competition in 2025), and organising their annual Mock Trial. He was appointed MBE in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to the community in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Tim’s gift came from the Peter and Teresa Harris Charitable Fund, of which he is a trustee, and is made in the name of Peter Harris of Crooms Hill, who was a close friend of many years’ standing. It helped bring the Trust to the income the Charity Commission requires for registration.

Dr Chris Gill

Founding Patron No. 03.

Chris has lived on Royal Hill, Greenwich, since he and his wife retired there in 2015. He holds a degree in Agricultural Sciences (1968) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Plant Ecology (1972) from the University of Liverpool, and returned to Cambridge to work in academic research, teaching and consultancy before moving into the sales and product development of wood-based components for the building industry. He joined the Timber Research and Development Association (TRADA) in 1984, becoming its Chief Executive in 1988. He led the management buyout that formed the BM TRADA Group in 1994 and later chaired the Group. Over the following twenty years it grew to a turnover of £30m and became a leading provider of research, information, testing, consultancy and certification services across timber and wood-based composites, with operations worldwide.

Michael Trousdell

Secretary.

Michael lives in Charlton, a short walk from the Rotunda, and is secretary of Our Lady of Grace Parish Buildings Preservation Trust, also in Charlton. He is a chartered mechanical engineer and a director at WSP, where he leads sustainability and technology work in the property and buildings division, and holds a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is co-author, with Dr Nikolaos Karydis, of the Woolwich to Greenwich Heritage Trail strategic proposal. He administers the Trust’s procurement, funding applications and correspondence with statutory bodies.

Treasurer

Vacancy.

The Trust is looking for a treasurer to join the board, ideally with an accounting or finance qualification, to oversee its accounts, grant claims and reporting to the Charity Commission. Anyone interested is welcome to write to the Chair at chair@rotundatrust.org.uk.