Francis Taylor Building

Philip Petchey enjoys unravelling what is complicated, obscure or dense (or all three) and his practice affords him the opportunity of doing so. Thus in R (Newhaven Port and Properties) v East Sussex County Council it was necessary to investigate the law relating to access to the seashore going back to Bracton as well as the power of a corporation in Scotland to grant a servitude, In Evans v Wimbledon and Putney Conservators he had to consider not only the powers of the Conservators under an obscure act of 1871 but also how those powers had been exercised in providing access to a hospital built on an island in the common. In In re St Stephen Walbrook the history of the installation of a painting by Benjamin West in the church in the eighteenth century had to be investigated as well as the circumstances of it being moved in the nineteenth century and removed in the twentieth. And so on. A grasp of the foundations in fact and law of the case under consideration cannot ensure success, but experience shows that it is a good starting point.

Called to the bar in 1976.

MA (Oxon) Chancellor of the Diocese of Southwark