Educated at Ampleforth College and West of Scotland Agricultural College, John farmed at Paxton between 1970 and 1978. He was elected to Berwickshire District Council in 1974 and served first as Labour MP for Berwickshire & East Lothian and then from 1983 to 2001 for East Lothian. During this time John Home Robertson served on the Select Committees on Scotland and Defence; was the Opposition spokesman on Scotland and Agriculture; Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Cunningham at the Ministry of Agriculture then the Cabinet Office. Between 1999 and 2007, he served as MSP for East Lothian. During this time John Home Robertson was: Deputy Minister for Rural Affairs, then Convener of the Holyrood [Parliament Building] Progress Group). He was a member of the Press Complaints Commission 2008-11.

John married his wife, Catherine in 1977. He undertakes regular voluntary work with Edinburgh Direct Aid in Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, Pakistan, Kenya, Lebanon, Poland and the Ukraine.

Paxton House:

John Home Robertson inherited Paxton House from his mother in 1987, then established the Paxton Trust in 1988. He has been a Paxton trustee since that date, taking the role of managing trustee from 2010-11.

Since retirement, has been continuing voluntary work for Edinburgh Direct Aid and for the Paxton Trust (including the waterwheel restoration project). Also running local house conversion and construction projects and volunteering on archaeology sites around the Borders and an active trustee for the Friends of the Union Chain Bridge.

Education:

1956-63 The Stationers’ Company’s School in Hornsey, North London

1963-67 BSc Chemistry, University of Oxford

1967-70 D.Phil. on neutron scattering by metal-hydrogen systems, University of Oxford.

Career:

1970 – graduate trainee Samuel Hill investment bank followed by various jobs.

1973/74 elected as a Common Councilman for Aldersgate Without Ward in the City of London..

1977-1990 Houston, Texas; Investment bank, Simmons & Company, eventually becoming a partner and managing director before returning to Britain. Qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst and served a term as President of the Houston Society of Financial Analysts. He has an extensive publication record in this field of expertise.

1990-2017 London, UK. Served as an independent turnaround director/chairman for a wide variety of distressed businesses all over the world designing and implementing strategies to recover value for banks and shareholders from underperforming and failing businesses.  His final major turnaround project (mostly based in China) concluded successfully in 2016.

Other work:

Founder member of The Institute for Turnaround and was elected a Founding Fellow of the Institute.  In 2015 he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of St. Catherine’s College, (52 years after he first came to Oxford as an undergraduate) in recognition of his services to College over many years.  He also served on the board of The Northern Rock Foundation for ten years and chaired the Foundation’s finance, risk and audit committee.

Current positions:

Chair of The Northstar Foundation, a Newcastle-based charitable organisation which he founded in 2014. He is a Freeman of The Stationers’ Company and a member of The Reform Club. Tony is committed to The Music at Paxton annual 10-day music festival which has been running for over 10 years.

Alan holds a first class architecture degree from Edinburgh University and was a partner in architecture firm Robbie + Wellwood between 1979-1975; Bain Swan Architects 1975-2019. Both practices work mainly in Berwickshire and north Northumberland including regeneration projects in Eyemouth and Berwick-upon-Tweed; restoration and conversion of historic buildings Gunsgreen House, Eyemouth, and Dewars Lane Granary, Berwick-upon-Tweed. Projects at Paxton House include rebuilding of Estate Boathouse 1974 and re-erection in 2020 of The Edinburgh Window in The Appleyard.

Alan is also a Trustee of Gunsgreen House (2013-present)

Adrian is a company/commercial and charity lawyer, having worked for the same Edinburgh law firm since 1989.  He is an experienced charity trustee and has been on the board of a number of charities primarily in the fields of the arts, heritage and education.  He is currently chairman of the governors of Longridge Towers School and a trustee of a number of other charities including The RSA Foundation, Horse Time SCIO and The Women’s Fund for Scotland.  As a trustee, and latterly chairman, of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop he oversaw the completion of two significant capital projects in central Edinburgh.  He lives on the south side of the Tweed within walking distance of Paxton.

Patrick grew up in Paxton House as a direct descendant of the family who built the house and son of managing trustee, John Home Robertson. Here he climbed most of the trees possible to climb during the 1980s and 1990s and filled his wellies with water in every possible stretch of the streams in the grounds at Paxton.

Patrick’s interests include adventuring with his family, biking, kayaking, paddleboarding and all things related to our natural environment. He is currently working as Tree Health Operations Manager for Scottish Forestry.

Susan is a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst with a 1^st Class Honours Degree in Business Studies.  She worked for a number of years in the finance sector, including as Head of European Equities for M&G, and moved to Edinburgh in 2003 to join the Martin Currie Investment Group. Susan has retired from asset management but continues to work part time advising private clients and small businesses on investment decisions. She is a tennis enthusiast and has been Treasurer for Tennis Borders and local tennis clubs. She is interested in business strategy and finance.

Susan is a Trustee of The Maltings Theatre & Cinema (Berwick-Upon-Tweed) Trust, an independent charitable trust.

Richard Burns is a retired investment manager, having been a partner in Baillie Gifford & Co from 1977 to 2006. At University he studied History and then Law and has lived in Edinburgh since 1969. In retirement, he has been a Director of several investment trust companies and served on the Court of the University of Dundee and as a Trustee of a number of charities, including the National Galleries of Scotland, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Paxton Trust.

Elizabeth MacDonald has a degree in Music from the University of Edinburgh and has been Managing  Director of East Lothian based event management company Anwyl Ford Ltd since 2015. Her team deliver a wide spectrum of events from one-off seminars and CPD events to week-long conferences and exhibitions.

Since 2015, she has been General Manager of Music at Paxton chamber music festival and Co-Founder and Partner of the Rose Street Quartet, performing across Scotland and the North of England.

2010-15: Institute Administrator and Finance Co-Ordinator, Institute for Sustainable Construction, Napier University, Edinburgh

2006-10: Financial Administrator & Course Organiser, PG Transferable Skills Unit, University of Edinburgh. Her team was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education

www.anwylford.co.uk | www.musicatpaxton.co.uk  |  www.rosestreetquartet.co.uk

Christopher is an art historian and curator and was a Director at the National Galleries of Scotland for ten years; he has also worked at Christ Church, Oxford, and the National Gallery in London. He is the 2022-23 Paul Mellon Rome Fellow and has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale University.

Christopher has published and lectured widely on eighteenth and nineteenth-century British and European art and the history of collecting, and organised numerous exhibitions in the UK and internationally. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, the Spoliation Advisory Panel and the Recognition Committee (Museums Galleries Scotland), as well as being a Trustee of the Compton Verney Collection Settlement.