Yesterday officially marked the 1st day of Christmas for us here at Gilbert Stephens, and what a busy few weeks we are going to have!
It all kicks off with the Ottery St Mary Christmas Tree Festival, running from today until 26th November. We have a beautiful Christmas Tree in the Ottery Parish Church again this year, which has kindly been decorated by Claire Collett.
This November marks 5 years since we sadly lost Liz Govier, a Private Client Solicitor at our Ottery office. Liz used to decorate this tree every year and now her daughter, Claire, continues the tradition in her memory.
Do drop by and have a look at the wonderful Christmas trees in the church. They will be open and serving refreshments between 11am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, and from 11am to 4pm on Sunday.
We will also be open on the evening of Friday 24th November for Ottery’s Festive Cheer event, so please drop by and join us for some mulled wine, mince pies and of course, chocolate for the kids!
We are pleased to announce that in one week alone, we raised an incredible total of £430 for Childrens Hospice South West, which has been our chosen charity of the year.
Children’s Hospice provide care for children who have life limiting conditions and are not expected to live into adulthood, whilst also supporting their whole family.
As part of our fundraising initiatives, we hosted a fundraising week, solely dedicated to raising as much as we could for the charity. This involved baking, games and even arm wrestling! Antonia and Laura from our Residential Conveyancing Department very kindly organised the week. It was a huge success amongst the team, leaving everyone in such high spirits! Here is what we did:
Day 1 – Halloween Bake off
Over the weekend, some of the team got their bakers hats on and baked up spooky treats for everyone to enjoy! Of course, it wouldn’t be a real bake off without some friendly competition, so Henrietta and Mary from CHSW had the tricky task of crowning the winner of the bake off.
After much anticipation and plenty of cake consumed, Jen was crowned winner with her pumpkin patch chocolate orange cake! She was closely followed by Debbi in 2nd place with her spider web mint chocolate tart and Ava in 3rd place with her spooky Oreo cupcakes!
Day 2 – Lunchtime Quiz
After 5 tense rounds of questions involving music, general knowledge and even a special round on CHSW, it was time to add up the scores… Leading to our quote of the day from Sue in accounts: ‘Do I have to add this all up?’ Thank you, Sue, for making us all chuckle!
Congratulations to the Litigation department who claimed victory after scores were carefully added up – we hope you enjoy your well-earned sweet treats!
Day 3 – Guess the baby competition
This was a favourite amongst the team here at GS!
17 baby photos were submitted, and everyone was given the task of guessing who was who! This certainly started some giggles around the office, especially with most of the office mistaking Ellen for Dan!
Well done to our winner, Louise, who got 11 out of 17 baby photos correct!
Day 4 – Games day
Over the course of the day, we had a series of games and competitions for everyone to get involved in, starting off tame and getting more competitive as the day went on!
In the morning, we had 2 kitchen competitions: Guess the number of sweets in the jar and name the elephant. Well done to Nigel for naming the elephant ‘Paul’ and well done to Simon C for guessing the number of sweets in the jar! Both winners had the opportunity to take home their prizes, the elephant, and the sweet jar. However, both have started a bidding war, where all proceeds will go to CHSW.
Finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for… ‘The Great Gilbert Stephens Arm Wrestle’! Sarah Heath started strong, beating Mandy, Maddy AND Antonia. However, when Sarah took on Paul Kibbler, she was unfortunately defeated and lost her place as champion. Paul took on both Simon C and Mark Perry but lost to Mark at the last minute. Lunchtime was coming to an end, meaning it was time to find someone to take on Mark. Antonia hunted high and low around the office for someone and found IT Simon! After an epic battle between the two, with Paul adjudicating, Simon claimed victory and was the winner of ‘The Great Gilbert Stephens Arm Wrestle’.
Day 5 – dress down Friday (green theme)
To finish off our week, it was dress down Friday, with a green twist for Childrens Hospice. There was also a prize for the best dressed, which went to Robin Hood (aka Jen!).
Overall, it has been such a positive week and thank you again to Antonia and Laura for organising it – you both did a splendid job! We would also like to give a big thank you to everyone for taking part and donating throughout the week.
Last Friday, we were honoured to be asked to decorate a Princesshay Charity Tree on behalf of Childrens Hospice South West this year.
Thank you to Ava, Laura, Louise, Sarah, Amanda, Claire and Susan who spent their Friday lunchtime making it look Christmassy and WOW – doesn’t it just!
We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who attended our joint seminar with Simpkins Edwards yesterday afternoon at Okehampton Business Centre. The event was a great success with a brilliant turnout!
Conall Ryan gave an insightful talk on Wills and LPA’s, followed by Paul Williamson who spoke on Inheritence Tax and Estates, which certainly kept everyone fully engaged! Following the talks, there were plenty of questions from the floor, which sparked discussions and debate amongst the room and were all answered in great detail by both Conall and Paul.
We even had a delicious buffet lunch with many more discussions. It was also a good opportunity for people to talk to our speakers on a 1:1 basis if they had any further questions.
If you have any queries, or would like to book an appointment, please call us on 01837 512100 or email
Or if you would like us to arrange a bespoke seminar for you and your colleagues please do get in contact.
Halloween bake off for Childrens Hospice South West
Over the last two days, an incredible total of £85 was raised for CHSW, through our Halloween cake sale, alone!
Of course, it wouldn’t be a real bake off without some friendly competition, so Henrietta and Mary from CHSW had the tricky task of crowning the winner of the bake off.
After much anticipation and plenty of cake consumed, Jen was crowned winner with her pumpkin patch chocolate orange cake! She was closely followed by Debbi in 2nd place with her spider web mint chocolate tart and Ava in 3rd place with her spooky Oreo cupcakes!
Well done to all our talented bakers for putting together a spooky selection of goodies for everyone to enjoy. We are delighted to have raised so much for such an important cause.
Congratulations to our superb runners for completing the Exeter City Community Trust Halloween run this weekend.
After much anticipation, Francesca came in 1st out of our GS team, completing the 5 miles in an astonishing 44 minutes! 2 minutes after that, Antonia followed shortly behind. Cathy came in after 52 minutes, also closely followed by Sue-Ellen who came in at 54 minutes. Jude finished after 1 hour 12 minutes. Well done to you all – those were brilliant times!
Following that, everyone all stayed behind at the finish line to cheer Becky on, who completed her 10 miles in an incredible 1 hour 54 minutes!!
Thank you to Ava too, for being there to cheer everyone on from start to finish and for being the ‘Gilbert Stephens Camel’, looking after everyone’s coats, rucksacks, phones and more!
The run was in aid of the Exeter City Community Trust, who are Exeter’s leading health and wellbeing charity, working in partnership with Exeter city football club. It was a lovely way to spend such a crisp, autumnal, Sunday morning along the water. We were also VERY lucky with the weather after Saturday’s downpours!
Last Friday, our Okehampton office hosted a coffee morning, in aid of Hospicecare. People in our team all bought in home baked goods, which all certainly went down a treat! We hear that the lemon and lime drizzle cake, baked by Conall’s mum, was a favourite amongst them all!
Thank you to everyone who popped in to join us, including those from Mansbridge Balment and Simpinks Edwards, who also dropped in to buy some cakes. And a big thank you to our wonderful team who baked all of the delicious sweet treats! We raised a total of £60.60 for Hospicecare, which are delighted with!
Gilbert Stephens was honoured to sponsor Bampton Twinning Race Night this year, in aid of the 50th Anniversary of the Bampton Twinning Association.
Bampton is a town in mid Devon, twinned with Villers Bocage, Calvados, Normandy, France. The aim of the Association is to promote visits, exchanges, and links with their twin town in France. The twinning link was first set up in 1974!
The Race Night was held on Saturday 30th September and 3 of our team, Ava Hill, Sarah Heath and Laura Newbold went along and all got involved. They were even given the task of being ‘jockeys’ in the final race!
In the lead up to the race night, we were tasked with picking 7 horse names for the Gilbert Stephens Gold cup. It was brilliant to see everyone get so creative with names – here is what we came up with:
Fearless Defender by Debbi Egan
Where there’s a Will by Bev Coupe
Even Stephens by Helen Clegg
Galloping Gilbert by Jen Wigmore
Court Room Drama by Cheryl Staunton
Law and Disorder by Sarah Heath
Court Red Handed by Wendy Rockey
There were 9 races in the lead up to the final race, The Gilbert Stephens Gold Cup, where all of our horses (named above) were racing for the final win! Tensions were running high as ‘Law and Disorder’ and ‘Galloping Gilbert’ were neck and neck through most of the race. However, in the last minute, ‘Law and Disorder’ (owned by Sarah Heath) took the lead and won the Gold Cup!
Congratulations to all in our Budleigh office for securing 1st place in the Carnival Club’s Window Display Competition!
Judging took place on Friday 22nd September at noon, where three local people had the responsibility of deciding which window should be crowned the winner! The theme this year was carnival, so windows needed to be fun, bright and colourful! Looking at all the other windows, the standards were very high and it was wonderful to see the effort that had gone in to each and every one. After much anticipation, Gilbert Stephens was eventually crowned the proud winners of the Chris Coles Memorial Cup, which we get to hold on to for a year.
A big thank you to Julia, Gazelle, Kate and Mike who decorated our winning window! We have had many compliments from clients who even think we should keep the display up all year round!
Last weekend, 5 of our team spent their Saturday afternoon bucket collecting for Children’s Hospice South West at Sandy Park. We are absolutely over the moon to hear that an incredible total of £1300 was raised during the game between England’s Red Roses and the Canadian Women’s Rugby team. A big congratulations to the Red Roses who won 50-24!
When our team arrived, they were briefed and given their tabards, collection buckets and card machines. At the beginning of the day, the girls said they found it a little tricky working out the best way to approach people. However, in no time at all, they soon got into the swing of things and by the end of the day, felt really proud of how much they had collected between them all!
Bucket collection was only permitted before, at half time and at the end of the game, so they were even lucky enough to watch most of the game themselves! Antonia D’Alessio said “Children’s Hospice is such a brilliant charity and we were honoured to be collecting on their behalf. We are very much looking forward to working with them in the future. It was fantastic to watch such a fast paced game with two incredibly powerful teams. With over 9,000 attendees, the support for women made you feel like you were part of something bigger.”
A big thank you to Ava Hill, Francesca Edgington, Antonia D’Alessio, Laura Newbold and Louise Johnson for dedicating their Saturday to such an important cause. However, more importantly, thank you to everyone who donated. Without donations, Children’s Hospice South West would not be able to carry out the amazing work they do.
This information does not constitute legal or financial advice and you are advised to seek the guidance of a lawyer or financial advisor to discuss your individual requirements.
