I’m writing this so that people in Shetland particularly have a better idea of who I am. In a community where everyone knows everyone else, it’s unsettling not to know a person’s background. My other reason is that my campaign to get more autonomy for Shetland involves my challenging the UK authorities. As it will not be difficult to dig into my past and unearth some ‘skeletons’, it’s best if they are brought out into the open so they cannot be used as ammunition against me. I am purposely leaving out details of my family. I am now divorced, but have two children and four grandchildren. My wife was a solid support through a great deal of my life and my two children and four grandchildren have been a joy – I just don’t see enough of them.
My life in business started soon after I was married. In 1969 I wanting to double glaze the large windows of our Victorian ground-floor flat in Bromley. I did not have the money to buy a commercial system, so designed my own. To pay for having the aluminium sections specially made I went out and got orders to install for other people. The hallway of the flat became a workshop and production got under way. I remember wiping the aluminium shavings off my feet before getting into bed.
This obviously could not continue, so I soon moved into a run-down workshop and continued operations from there. In three to four years the business expanded into larger premises with a small factory and showroom. Production now included aluminium widows, patio doors and commercial shopfronts. By this time we were working all over the London area and even installing shopfronts in Oxford Street.
I decided to branch into aluminium cladding for houses and launched an advertising campaign in many of the DIY and home magazines. Right on cue, the postal strike came, ruining any chance of getting back the enquiry forms from the adverts. The resulting debt gave me my first taste of business failure. I had gone from nothing to being the managing director of a small but successful company and now it was gone.
At least all my suppliers were paid, so I started up again with one of my ex employees and we worked together installing patio doors and also on some quite large contracts installing glazing systems for commercial projects. One of these was the glazing for Margate swimming pool, followed by a similar project for Ramsgate. At the point where we had all the materials on site for the Ramsgate job, the main contractor went into liquidation and our materials were held, even though they had not been paid for. Once again disaster stared me in the face. Although we were able to pay all the suppliers, I was unable to pay the bank, who forced the sale of the Bromley flat.
With the £8,000 left and no possibility of a mortgage, finding another house in Bromley was out of the question, so we looked further afield. East Anglia was a lot cheaper and we were able to buy the old forge in the village of Claydon, near Ipswich for cash. Built in 1531, it had about a half acre of land, including part of an overgrown orchard. The bathroom was a shed outside the back door with an old copper boiler. There were four rooms on the ground floor, the upper floor having been burned down in the 1920s. It had been connected to the water mains a few months previously. Prior to that water was drawn from the well. I set about putting in hot water and making the house habitable. Over the years we kept goats, ducks, hens, rabbits, geese, grew our own vegetables and generally lived the rural life.
Attached to the cottage was the forge itself. It was empty when we got it, but had been in use up to about six months previously, when the old blacksmith died. In a rural area there was not much use for my skills with aluminium glazing systems, but I had the forge, so decided to be the village blacksmith. A week’s training with CoSIRA in Salisbury was all I could afford before opening the doors for business in 1977. I was only going to open once, so contacted the local paper, local radio and TV – more in hope than anticipation. The positive response shocked me and opened my eyes to the benefits of publicity.
My lack of experience in blacksmithing and the shortage of money both turned out to be blessings in the end. Not knowing all the right answers meant that every so often I would come up with something different, and not being able to buy fancy equipment made me develop skills in the fire quite quickly. In 1980 I became the first British blacksmith to win a prestigious award in Lindau, Germany – a piece that was afterwards bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum eventually acquired five more pieces for their metalwork collection. During the next few years I exhibited widely and gave demonstrations in American and Germany. A book – Stuart Hill, Metalworks was written by a German Professor of architecture, covering the work I did during this period and some of the following larger work.
As the business prospered we were able to re-build the house and even to build a holiday home in Northern Cyprus – the first castle in the Kyrenia mountains since the crusades!
I began to feel a need to work on a larger scale, so started to seek out architects and landscape architects to work with. This led to larger contracts and a requirement for larger premises. There was a factory available at the other end of the village and Claydon Architectural Metalwork Ltd. was born in 1985. With the use of large presses and heavy machinery I was able to translate some of my innovative craft techniques into factory processes, with the result that we could produce fences and gates with a high design content at very commercial prices. These larger contracts, most of which were for urban local authorities, meant that each job was like a small production run in its own right and each could have an individual design.
I had a dedicated workforce of around fourteen, with my wife valiantly holding together the money side, while I kept everything on a financial knife-edge by continuing to develop new ideas. Eventually something had to give. In 1996, when the company was close to £1 million turnover, there was a bit of a slow-down in the economy that hit us hard. To keep the company going, and to get some financial stability behind us, I let go 50% of my shareholding to our major supplier. My expectation was that this would enable us to continue the innovative work we were well known for, but they had different ideas. Their plan was to cut out the R&D and simply concentrate on the existing products and processes. The company is still thriving today, so their commercial judgement was probably right.
As time went on the friction on the board became intolerable and I ended up releasing the remainder of my shareholding. I was convinced by my experience in America and a comprehensive market research project amongst American specifiers that there was a market for my work in America. With the American rights to the products in my pocket, I liquidated all my pensions and insurances to raise enough money to set up shop in America. The marketing operation in Dallas was headed by a vice president of one of the USA’s largest landscape architecture practices and manufacturing was in Arkansas.
I spent the best part of a year visiting America’s top architects and landscape architects, designing and getting the work specified in various projects. Unfortunately I did not understand a crucial difference in the business culture over there. In England, once we were specified in the contract, the job was ours as long as the contract went ahead, but in America, the contractor has a lot more power and is able to change the specification and substitute a different product if it will save money. An early job was about a mile of railings in Arizona that should have put about $250,000 in the bank, but the contractor simply stole the design and had it made by his own people. In the face of these difficulties I was forced to withdraw and return to England to lick my wounds.
At the age of 55, having lost all our retirement security, I’m looking round thinking “this is an interesting situation”. I had also foolishly used my personal credit card to pay for travel expenses on company business. This now left me with a personal liability to pay that still hangs over my head.
I had been aware for some time of some high-yield investments available only to people of high net worth ($10 million plus). Communicating with others via the Internet, we got a group of about 100 together to invest at a lower level with the idea of working up. For my part in getting the group together, I was to receive an equal share. I hired the local hall and the group got together to discuss a strategy. From the group three people were elected to take charge of the initial investment and put in an offshore bank – something I did not have the expertise nor the willingness to do. While a suitable investment vehicle was sought, one member got impatient and contacted the FSA, who contacted me as the leader of the group. They subjected me to an intense investigation, trawling through all my records and taking copies of my computer drives. I protested that they only had the authority to demand specified documents and that they could not simply go on a ‘fishing’ expedition through all my records. I did eventually manage to get the copies returned in their sealed bags, but not before the FSA took me to the High Court, where I had to defend myself – not having the money to employ a barrister. There I was accused of running a ‘collective investment scheme’, for which I would have needed a license. This was a nonsense because the decision to enter any scheme was a democratic one by the whole group, not me saying “give me your money and I’ll invest it for you”. Nevertheless, I was found guilty and given a fine of £30,000.
Meanwhile, the three people entrusted with the money had got together, decided to steal the money and make their own investment. I reported this to the police, but they took no action. Apparently it was enough to have somebody to pin a case on.
Back to square one. How to make a living sufficient to keep body and soul together while also paying these mounting bills? For a while I sold bathrooms for a leading bathroom company. I'm not good at the kind of pressure selling they indulged in, but I developed my own computer programme for the company’s products that enabled me to become their top salesman for the short time I was there. When I left, I got together with one of their managers to start a kind of ‘Yellow Pages’ for the IT industry. With the dot com bubble just around the corner, this was bad timing. Although we had people like Microsoft and other big names signed up, it was a hard job to get firms to advertise.
When, in late 2000 I suggested to my partner the possibility of sailing solo, non-stop round Great Britain in my 14ft open sailing boat as a promotion for the company and to raise some money for charity at the same time, he wasted no time in telling our customers about it. I was now committed to what had started as a light-hearted joke. Each customer sponsored the project by buying advertising space on the sail of ‘Maximum Exposure’. I renovated and adapted my aluminium workboat hull for the trip. A self-righting buoyancy system was built in, the boat was made to be self-draining and was fitted with a specially adapted windsurfer rig. The latest electronics were installed, together with on-board computer, three navigation systems, three GPS units, plus paper charts in case all else failed. The boat was so well equipped that the RNLI gave it a gold sea safety award.
The trip itself and my arrival in Shetland are copiously, if erroneously, recorded elsewhere. One day I may write the story of that voyage from my perspective. Even though I failed in my attempt to circumnavigate Great Britain and was not able to raise any money for charity, my sponsors certainly got the publicity they wanted. The sponsor for my clothing said “I was looking for publicity, but didn’t expect to find my company’s name on television nearly every night”.
The promotion was not enough to keep our internet company going and this was the last straw for my marriage. I arrived in Shetland with only the clothes I stood up in. No money, no home to go back to, no job – nothing. On the other hand I had no ties or responsibilities. Having decided some years ago to live to the age of 117, at 58½ this was clearly the half-way point. How could I use the experience of the first half to design the next? How many people are ever given that opportunity?
My first priority was to get a job and somewhere to live. I put an advert in the Shetland Times asking if anyone had a job with accommodation. The sole reply was from a joinery works in Cunningsburgh where I was able to use my window making skills whilst living in a flat above the workshop.
Having been self-employed all my life, I soon felt the need to start my own business again. Various small ventures - a photography website (don't try to order - the service is no longer supported), assembling flat-pack furniture, carpentry work and so on. A short period on social security ‘benefits’ convinced me to stay away from state welfare. The largest craft work I have made in Shetland is the reception desk for the new museum. Made from the keel and stem-post from a ship salvaged during renovations to the old Hay’s Dock, the main part of the desk is a lump of oak weighing about two tons. Changes were made to the design at the last minute and I am not credited with the work on the attached notice, but at least my initials are carved on the end.
A small legacy from my father enabled me to invest in gold coins. I was convince the price of gold would rise and happened to buy on the very day that the price was at its lowest for many years. As the price rose I was able to sell a few at a time, making enough money to live on without reducing the value of the whole.
Now, although a pension has reduced the urgency to make a living, I’m still looking for ways to support the work I’m doing. Various ideas have come and gone and I have about 100 internet domain names connected with them and for other future projects. A pet project I’ve had on the drawing board for years is a reversible aerofoil wing sail, which could be the next generation of sail propulsion systems. I’ve not patented it, so no details are available, but I am becoming more and more tempted to simply publish it and let somebody else develop it.
The one abiding interest since coming to Shetland has been the research into its history and trying to find a way to bring the UK government to book over the way Shetland has been abused through the centuries.
I’ve had my ups and downs and will continue to do so. I’ve taken risks – some have paid off handsomely while others have not. I’ve experienced poverty and modest wealth, hard physical work and driving a computer. Looking back, there’s nothing I would change – it’s all helped to make me the man I am and many of those experiences are proving their value on this project. Failure is not a word that usually enters my vocabulary. The man who never fails is a man who is not trying.