Rippleswade Hall Read online

  Rippleswade Hall

  Or a study on madness

  Iain Allsopp

  Austin Macauley Publishers

  Rippleswade Hall

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Copyright Information ©

  Acknowledgements

  First Witness Statement of Barrington Olivier Whibley

  The Voices

  About the Author

  Currently residing in East Herts, Iain Allsopp was born in Scotland and has previously lived in New Zealand and Australia. Happily married and proud father of two daughters and two grandchildren. This is his first novel.

  Dedication

  To the Special Ones – you know who you are.

  Copyright Information ©

  Iain Allsopp 2022

  The right of Iain Allsopp to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781528987271 (Paperback)

  ISBN 9781528987288 (ePub e-book)

  www.austinmacauley.com

  First Published 2022

  Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

  1 Canada Square

  Canary Wharf

  London

  E14 5AA

  Acknowledgements

  Lyrics credit from the song titled “Feelings 4 u” written , performed and produced by Low Deep T for cut&play music, UK.

  IN THE ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE PFW-97310 – 42974

  QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION

  (1) NATALIE REBECCA FIONA TRELEWYN-DIGBY The Claimant

  and –

  (2) BARRINGTON OLIVIER WHIBLEY The Defendant

  First Witness Statement of Barrington

  Olivier Whibley

  I, Barrington Olivier Whibley of Willow Cottage, Norton Farm Road, Favering Creechurch, Dorset DT34 3LU will make oath and say as follows:

  1.

  I make this statement in response to legal proceedings that have been issued against me by Natalie Trelewyn-Digby (“NTD”).

  2.

  I am a qualified electrical engineer and am a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. My first degree was in civil engineering at Aberyswith University, where I graduated with an upper second in 1967.

  3.

  In view of the nature of some of the allegations that have been made against me I have set out below in some detail how I became an expert in the forensic analysis of fire claims. After graduating I worked at KMT Limited, a long-established engineering practice in the West Country. I worked at that firm from the autumn of 1967 to 1992, just under 25 years. At the beginning of my career I worked as a junior engineer, but after three years I was made an associate and ten years later I became a senior associate, which was the position I held until my departure.

  4.

  From 1975 to 1984 my clients required more and more forensic work from me and I began my practice in fire investigations. This came about primarily as a result of one of our major clients buying up a regional fish and chip shop chain late in 1974. Over the following six years there were nine significant fires in those shops all related to either alleged defective fryers or ducting. This is a specialised field and as there was no relevant expertise in the West Country at that time.

  5.

  From early 1985 until 1992 I was head of a separate unit from the main practice, which became known as Forensic Investigations. For most of this time there were three of us; myself, Bill Nially and Teresa Hart, effectively our PA/secretary. The work had steadily grown from the mid-1970s and we had successfully gotten onto the expert panels of various insurance companies, including some Lloyd’s syndicates.

  6.

  The work essentially involved making site visits either during or immediately after significant fires, ranging from small businesses, warehouses to private residences. Our clients were the insurers of the premises that had suffered damage. We covered the whole of the South-West region and it was common for us to be out of the office for three to four days of the week.

  7.

  Fires leave many clues as to their origin and nature and the sooner you can inspect the site the better. The main issue for forensic examination is that the fire brigade’s priority is to put the fire out and then ask questions.

  8.

  As a result of our success Bill and I were approached in 1992 to join a new company called Dunling & Co. KMT Limited had become less interested in supporting and pursuing the forensic work our team was undertaking and it was therefore agreed that Forensic Investigations would move to Dunling.

  9.

  We took all of our ongoing work with us and I understand KMT did well out of the deal. With the more positive backing we received at Dunling, Bill and I were able to expand and grow our business and by the time I left Dunling, to become an independent consultant, we had a team of seven. The areas of expertise had also widened so we took on all property damage work including water damage, subsidence and theft.

  10.

  The reason for becoming a consultant was that I had become disenchanted with all of the administrative and management responsibilities of being the senior member of the team. The clucking puppets that characterise so much of British middle management were a bore. On joining Dunling both Bill and I were made up as partners. With increasing pressure on billing targets, business plans and strategy initiatives I found very little time was being spent doing what I really enjoyed, forensic analysis. Instead of being out on the road three to four days a week I was in the office. In September 1992 it was therefore agreed with the Dunling partners that I would be retained as a consultant – effectively withdrawing from all of the management responsibilities. I was to be paid on an hourly rate for forensic investigation work undertaken on Dunling’s behalf.

  11.

  The fire, which is the incident at the heart of the legal proceedings that have been issued against me personally, was a matter referred to me directly approximately six months after I had been working as a consultant. The instructions were sent by Jed Parker, the Claims Manager at Gluckman Insurance Company Limited, someone I had worked with for many years. The reason why I can recall these particular instructions so clearly is that Jed had contacted me directly and this had caused issues as to whether I was being instructed in my independent capacity or whether the instructions were intended to be via Dunling. It took a number of phone calls to establish and agree that these instructions were not for Dunling’s account and these instructions were sent to me in my personal capacity as an independent forensic expert. Hence the reason, I assume, that Dunling was not named in these proceedings.

  12.

  Indeed, I can clearly recall receipt of these particular instructions. As I mentioned above, Jed Parker has known me for over 20 years and it was his personal style to first of all telephone to discuss any new matter he was forwarding. Claims people do things in different ways. Some simply write to you, some email but Jed always called first. The reason I recall this was that it was difficult to say much during this initial call without having seen the papers. The insurance policy and declaration would normally be provided with the initial instructions. Shown to me now and marked “BOW 1” is a copy of that original letter of instruction on the fire at Rippleswade Hall.

  13.

  The other reason I can recall these instructions coming in is that the fire had occurred nearly seven days earlier and it was unusual not to receive papers on such a potential loss within 24 hours of the incident. There did not appear to be any explanation for the delay. Jed knew that time was of the essence in these types of claim and really critical evidence can be lost or destroyed very quickly.

  14.

  What makes the delay even more peculiar was that this had been one of the key issues with the Cap’n Cod Fish Bar fire in 1984, one of the first large instructions I had received from Jed. That fire had occurred in the early hours of a Sunday morning, discovered at 4:30 a.m. by drunken passers-by. If I can give people one useful tip from all my years of experience in this business it is never live above a chip shop. The owner of the Cap’n Cod Fish Bar in Nether End was a Mr Wistham; a decent, hard-working family man with a wife and two young children. He lived above the shop and his wife and daughter both of whom perished in the fire, and his baby son suffered second degree burns and severe smoke inhalation. What struck me immediately with the Cap’n Cod matter was that there was no smoke alarm in the flat, Mr Wistham had assumed the smoke alarm in the shop would be sufficient. The cold reality was that if the drunken locals had not raised the alarm when they did the whole family would have perished.

  15.

  It was one of the hardest matters I had to deal with. Understandably, Mr Wistham was in no fit state to speak with me and his brother-in-law had the sense
to appoint a loss assessor on his behalf. They do have their uses. The instructions on this matter came in four days after the fire. It was clear from the preliminary paperwork this was a total write off but the critical thing was to be able to examine the two fryer units and the ducting, or more precisely what was left of them. All sorts of theories were put forward as to the cause of the fire; including one of the fryers being left on accidentally, one of the thermostats on one of the fryers being faulty, residue in the ducting catching fire and a discarded cigarette.

  16.

  From an early stage, soon after I made my first site inspection, and from the statements made by the attending fire officers, it seemed clear that the seat of the fire was either in, or directly above, the fryer closest to the entrance. The fire had gutted the building and there was significant rainfall soon after the fire was put out. Persons unknown had stolen the burnt out fryers and ducting, presumably for scrap metal, which meant that the critical evidence was either missing or water damaged. Had I been called immediately; the site would have been made secure and the evidence would have been collected and put into safe storage.

  17.

  It should have been possible to quickly establish where the fire started, depending on whether it was the fryer or the ducting that had been the cause of the fire – the fire patterns and spread would have been quite different. The ducting fitted to the ceiling would have burnt very differently to a fire staring in the fryer at ground level.

  18.

  Mr Wistham was still very shaken and distressed when I first met him seven days after the fire. He was able to confirm that the particular Saturday in question had followed a normal routine. He had gone down to the shop at approx. 10:30 a.m. and switched on the fryers for opening at 11:30. Trade was normally slow until just after midday. Mr Wistham did very little pre-cooking, almost everything was cooked to order. This made sense and was common practice as it cut down on wastage. Mr Wistham had originally been confused as to whether he had in fact switched on both of the fryers, as Saturday lunchtimes were not usually busy and he would generally have only switched on one fryer, which was the one furthest from the entrance. He was adamant that he normally only switched on the fryer nearest to the entrance on a Friday and Saturday night. Business was unexceptional that day and he closed at 2:30 p.m. turning off “both the fryers” and leaving the ducting extractor fans on timer to switch off at 3:00 p.m. Mr Wistham had then gone upstairs to have an early tea and a nap before opening again at 5:00 p.m. – he normally stayed open on a Saturday until 11:30 p.m.

  19.

  Mr Wistham went down to the fry bar at 4:30 p.m. and turned on all three fryers. Interestingly he commented that the fryer on the left-hand side of the range, left if you are standing behind the range looking out towards the customers on the other side, still seemed unusually warm. This of course immediately raised the question of whether the thermostat and on/off switches were working properly. It had been nearly eight months since the last service and the range was nearly six years old. It was newly purchased by Mr Wistham when he opened Cap’n Cod.

  20.

  The reason why this was important was that the insurers of Mr Wistham paid out just under £250,000 and would be seeking a recovery from whichever party was discovered to be responsible for the fire. In situations such as this there are a number of possible targets including the fry bar manufacturer, the thermostat manufacturer, the ducting manufacturer, the installers and the company paid to service and clean the equipment.

  21.

  So my task was to make investigations and define, in so far as I was able, what the cause of the fire had been. As mentioned in paragraph 16 (above), in this case parts of the fry bar range and ducting appeared to have been taken, no one knew for sure by whom. The attending fire brigade, without any evidence or witnesses, had referenced the fact that just outside the village a group of travellers had made a semi-permanent camp, since which time there had been a marked increase in petty crime. It struck me as odd that the fire service had stated this to be the case, but the Fire Report, completed after the fire brigade’s attendance at any fire, was for Home Office statistical purposes, not for forensic investigative purposes.

  22.

  I have no particular issue with travellers but there is no doubt in this case that whoever took the fire damaged ducting and parts of the fry bar range had either inadvertently or deliberately taken the critical evidence that was so important to my investigations.

  23.

  My suspicions were mildly aroused when Mr Wistham commented that he guessed that it made it difficult to turn down his insurance claim, if there was no hard evidence of foul play and therefore the insurance company would be looking to pay out and get the matter closed. I was about to say that this may not necessarily be the case but stopped myself. Instead, I said that it may be an important factor in the insurer’s declinature if anything untoward were discovered during the detailed process of considering the recovery options. Mr Wistham fidgeted and asked what I meant by that.

  24.

  The key point, which I have somewhat laboured to make, is that the earliest possible involvement of the forensic team at the site is essential. The TV is full of criminal investigation teams at murder scenes and my work is similar, perhaps a little less glamorous.

  25.

  It is with great clarity and detail that I can recall the three visits that I made to Rippleswade Hall:

  (1)

  on 15 December 2013 when my first visit was foreshortened by the snow storm;

  (2)

  on 9 April 2014 my second visit when I made a detailed inspection of the fire damage; and

  (3)

  on 21 June 2014 when I made a personal visit to attend a dinner party.

  26.

  NTD lives at Rippleswade Hall, a mock Tudor/Gothic style manor house, built by her great-great-grandfather John Trelewyn over 120 years ago. Most local people are not even aware of the existence of the property as it is 1.2 miles down a twisting tree lined private drive off the Chidbury Caundle to Mudford road. The entrance is marked by a stone gateway with iron gates. The driveway is covered in loose white stone, larger than shingle, but similar to look at from a distance. The first quarter mile of the drive twists through a wooded area and then becomes tree lined on both sides until you reach the Hall. At the point where the drive becomes tree lined there are raised banks on either side and the trees had been planted on top of the banks. This had the effect (I assume intended) as though you were driving through a tunnel. My first visit was in December. By the time I left it was dark and there were hundreds of white lights wrapped around the bare trees, which created a magical effect as I drove back to the main road through the sparkling tunnel and snow began to fall for the first time that winter.

  27.

  From my time on subsidence claims I knew something about trees and these were magnificent Cherry trees and I began to wonder if special soil had been brought in to create the banks onto which they had been planted. It intrigued me, as did many things to do with Rippleswade Hall.

  28.

  The drive opened out approx. 100 metres from the Hall, so that as you left the tunnel you saw in its panoramic glory for the first time the resplendent Rippleswade Hall. It became quickly apparent that NTD’s grandfather had great vision; as the effect of the avenue of Cherry trees would have taken decades to grow up and in spring bloom they created a floor of petals that ran all the way up the drive. One of the measures of how well Rippleswade Hall had been designed was the fact that there had been no major alterations or additions since it was first built. A point that I was later to learn was a source of great pride to the family.