The Governing Body

Ian Lucas has been in independent education since 1976. His experience includes teaching, boarding, administration, IT development and policy. Amongst his school activities he led expeditions to many out of the way places, was the musical director of a number of shows, and pursued active involvement in the Combined Cadet Force, with 15 years as the Contingent Commander at a major public school.

Ian is the author of several revision guides for the International Baccalaureate, and has taught on intensive revision courses both in the UK and around the world. His move to Sherborne coincided with retirement from full-time employment in 2015. He is the director of Peak Study Resources, an educational publishing company; is the secretary of the Sherborne Abbey Festival, and is treasurer of Sherborne Good Neighbours. He is married with three adult children and four grandchildren.

Rebecca Peacock is an Old Antonian and former teacher at Leweston. As a Dramatherapist and Teacher she works therapeutically with adults and children struggling with a range of mental health needs and currently specialises in re-engagement in education programmes for children not able to attend mainstream school.

Rebecca and her husband Daniel were married at Leweston in 1996 and have two children.

Valerie Simmons de Fontanals qualified as a Chartered Architect in 1973 and then moved from London to work in private practice in Bath. In 1980 she began her own Architectural Practice and in 1997 gained an MSc from Bath University in ‘The Conservation of Historic Buildings’. In 2001, alongside her work as an Architect, she began working on The English House Survey, collecting data on the energy efficiency and state of the national housing stock. Valerie has 2 daughters, who both went to Leweston, and a son. Her interests include music, opera, art and gardening.

Dermot McKechnie is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has over twenty years of investment banking experience. The majority of this was gained at Cazenove & Co. (latterly as a partner) and JPMorgan Cazenove. He currently lives full time in Somerset.

Professor Tony Meehan enjoyed a successful media, marketing and communications career in Scotland before retiring to Sherborne in 2013. He was chairman of his own public relations consultancy, TMA Communications Limited.

During his career, he has held a wide range of charity and board posts including:

Visiting Professor to the Department of Consumer Studies at Glasgow Caledonian University; lectured on Corporate Social Responsibility, Media Relations and Crisis Management at St Petersburg, Sofia, Kiev and Boğaziç – Bosphorus universities; Board member of the National Piping Centre; – Glasgow;  Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Fellow of the International Public Relations Association; Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts; a Member of BAFTA; Former Governor of St Leonard’s School, business advisor to Youth Enterprise at Sherborne Girls school. He is a former Trustee of the Friends of Yeatman Hospital;

He is Chairman of Sacred Heart and St Aldhelm’s parish finance committee.

Married with 2 adult children, and 3 grandchildren, interests include writing, music and cooking.

Simon Greenwood enjoyed a public-school education at Winchester College.  He first came to live in West Dorset in 1972 on leaving school when he was a farm student at Ryme Intrinseca before going to Reading University in 1973 to study Estate Management.  He returned each summer to work on the farm and the first job worth applying for was with Savills in Wimborne as a rural land agent.

Simon is a Chartered Surveyor and Director of Savills, having joined the firm in August 1976 and after 45 years still works three days per week in Wimborne.  His practice has evolved from rural land management and he is primarily involved with development consultancy and valuation, identifying potential land for development and then project managing it through the planning process until either selling it or negotiating the value of it.

Simon and his wife, Sara, live at Yetminster in a house her family bought in 1970 and are heavily involved in equestrian activities and other country sporting activities.  They have two daughters who are both involved with property, one is also a Director in Savills in the Residential Development Research team, the other, also a chartered surveyor, specialises in valuation management.

Paul Felbeck is a solicitor with over thirty years’ experience, starting in the City of London, where he qualified at Freshfields and subsequently in a variety of international legal roles for US and UK listed public companies.  He now chairs the board of trustees of a UK PLC’s occupational pension scheme and has chaired its investment committee for over a decade.  Paul was born in Mombasa, Kenya and began his education there with the Loreto Sisters; he has experience of both state and private education in the UK, enabled in part by a scholarship to Rugby School.  He has lived in Sherborne since 2014.

Jim Dutton served for 38 years in the Royal Marines, retiring as a Lieutenant General. In 2010, he joined the US firm Bechtel, spending two and a half years establishing and running a national infrastructure development project in Gabon, West Africa. In 2013, he was appointed as Governor and Commander in Chief of Gibraltar, representing HM The Queen. Back with Bechtel in 2016, he returned to Africa, latterly running development across the continent until 2021. Now involved with Service charities, he also advises a firm involved in anti ivory poaching and trafficking. Married with two children and two grandchildren, Jim and his wife live in Sherborne.

Graham Best gained his degree at Southampton University, followed by a PGCE in Secondary Education. He has worked in four different schools, both day and boarding, single sex and co-educational, senior and all-through. Graham was fortunate to be given a variety of responsibilities across his career, such as pastoral, academic, senior management, culminating in headship. His main teaching subject was history, though he taught a number of other classes including Business, English, Religious Studies and games. Graham has played a great deal of sport over the years and enjoys singing as a member at the Sherborne Abbey Choir.

Mark Brunel-Cohen was born near Liverpool, educated at Downside and Sandhurst (Army Scholar), followed by a thirty year career in the Wine Trade, the majority of which was with Allied Domecq.

He married Sally in 1974 and raised their five daughters in Sunningdale. For nearly fifteen years he was a School Governor at St Francis Catholic primary school in Ascot attended by his children.

Setting up his own online wine retailing business (Binends.com), he moved to Sherborne and his two youngest daughters were happily schooled at Leweston.

Since arriving in Sherborne, for five years Mark was a Lay Observer appointed by the Ministry of Justice.

With his Liverpool connections Mark has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of a Liverpool grant-making charity, helping disadvantaged young people. He is also Chairman of a small engineering company in Liverpool .

Mark has 10 grandchildren one of which is about to begin his association with Leweston at the Nursery.

Janet Schofield graduated from Exeter University with a degree in Law. Janet worked in marketing, firstly in legal publishing and then the financial services industry. Always keen to try new and interesting things, when she and her husband were bringing up small children, she took the opportunity to work for a music therapy charity and to do some marketing consultancy before, in 2001, the family moved to Dorset to run their own self-catering holiday business. For 20 years Janet has been immersed in Dorset tourism, not least as manager of three local tourist information centres including Sherborne.

Projects alongside work have included setting up a new Beaver Scout group with a colleague and acting as secretary of the Dorchester Air Cadets.  Janet also volunteers for the Sherborne Abbey Festival committee. When not indulging her passion for choral singing (she is a long-standing member of Sherborne Chamber Choir, as well as singing with choirs in Salisbury and Winchester) she can be found walking miles in the Dorset countryside with the family dog. She is married with two (at last) grown up children and lives in Dorchester.