Twenty-three years at 3 St Mary’s Hill, on the limestone lane that climbs from the Town Bridge over the Welland to St Mary’s Church. Five lawyers on the desk, led by Sarah Westwood (Partner, Head of Estate Administration, qualified 1997). Four of the five work Private Client. The fifth, Alex Hartnoll, is the Family practitioner and a Resolution member. The wider Buckles network in Bristol, Cambridge, London, Nottingham, Peterborough, Paris and Milan sits behind the Stamford door when the work calls for it.
The Stamford office is not a generalist high-street practice. It is a Private Client desk with a single Family practitioner attached, and a network of cross-border colleagues a phone call away. The grid below reflects what the team actually does, not the eight-area firm-wide list.
The spine of the Stamford desk and the work most often instructed at the front door. Tax-efficient will drafting, Inheritance Tax planning (including residence nil-rate band and downsizing addition), declarations of trust, obtaining probate on straightforward and taxable estates, full estate administration. Sarah Westwood (Partner, qualified 1997) supervises a four-strong Private Client team.
Leads Sarah WestwoodHealth-and-welfare LPAs and property-and-financial LPAs, registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. Care-home fee planning before the moment is forced. Court of Protection work for clients who lack the capacity to plan. The work to do in your sixties and seventies, not your eighties. Charlotte Bradford brings NHS geriatrics experience and Andrea Harrod is a Dementia Friend.
Leads Andrea Harrod, Charlotte BradfordDivorce and financial remedies (including pension sharing), pre-nuptial agreements, cohabitation agreements for unmarried couples, and arrangements for children. Alex Hartnoll is a Chartered Legal Executive and a Resolution member, which means the conduct is collaborative by default and adversarial only where the matter genuinely requires it.
Leads Alex HartnollEstate planning where there are assets, beneficiaries or grandchildren in another jurisdiction. Sarah Westwood reads German; Andrea Harrod handles cross-border estate administration; the wider Buckles firm has offices in Paris and Milan and lawyers qualified in French, German, Spanish and Italian law. Notarial certifications can be cross-routed when the document needs to land abroad.
Leads Andrea Harrod, Sarah WestwoodThe Stamford office opened in 2002, taking the room behind a honey-stone Georgian frontage on the lane that climbs from the Town Bridge over the River Welland to St Mary’s Church. The address has not moved.
In 2005 the wider firm reconstituted as Buckles Solicitors LLP, with the Stamford office continuing at 3 St Mary’s Hill under the same Buckles brand. Through the 2010s the Stamford practice quietly settled around Private Client work: wills, probate, estate administration, lasting powers of attorney. The natural fit for a market town between Burghley House and Casterton, with a substantial older population, family farms in the surrounding villages and the kind of stone-built homes that change hands one generation at a time.
Today the desk is five lawyers: Sarah Westwood (Partner), Andrea Harrod, Alex Hartnoll, Charles Sinclair and Charlotte Bradford. Four of the five work Private Client. The fifth is a Resolution-member Family practitioner. The wider Buckles network (Cambridge, Peterborough, London, Bristol, Nottingham, Paris, Milan) sits behind the front door when a will needs to work across two jurisdictions or a probate matter touches a French or German asset.
“A fresh approach to the matters I deal with, thinking outside the box and seeking creative solutions for my clients.” Andrea Harrod, Senior Associate, on her own approach to estate planning at the Stamford desk
The Stamford office is the people in it. Below: Sarah Westwood, Andrea Harrod, Alex Hartnoll, Charles Sinclair and Charlotte Bradford. Each card carries the direct number you would be given over the phone at reception, plus a single paragraph on the work each of them owns.
Heads up the Stamford branch. Twenty-eight years of probate practice, fourteen of them with taxable estates. Trained at a leading Kent firm. Wills, full estate administration, lasting powers of attorney, care-home fee planning, tax planning. Reads German.
Will drafting and tax-efficient estate planning. Inheritance Tax, declarations of trust, cross-border estate planning. Holds Dementia Friend status. Walks the Burghley Estate at the weekend.
Divorce and financial remedies, pre-nuptial agreements, the law applicable to unmarried couples (including cohabitation agreements), and arrangements for children. Calm, considered, collaborative.
Estate planning, bespoke and tax-efficient will drafting, estate administration, lasting powers of attorney. Previously a litigator at a top-50 firm.
Wills, lasting powers of attorney, care-home fees and Court of Protection. Two years with the NHS at Peterborough City Hospital, in geriatrics and neurology. The right combination for elderly and vulnerable clients.
Four of the five Stamford lawyers work Private Client. Sarah Westwood has fourteen years of probate experience and reads German. Andrea Harrod handles cross-border estate planning. Charles Sinclair drafts bespoke tax-efficient wills. Charlotte Bradford brings two years of NHS hospital experience to the lasting-powers-of-attorney and care-home fees work. That is not a generalist practice. It is a desk built for the work that walks in from Stamford, Casterton, Easton-on-the-Hill, Ketton and the wider Burghley-and-Welland catchment.
A short enquiry form for an initial response by telephone or email. Once we understand the matter we can quote a fixed fee where the work supports it, or hourly with an estimated total where it does not. We say so in writing either way.
The office is two minutes on foot from the Town Bridge over the River Welland and ten minutes from Stamford railway station. Burghley House and its deer-park gate are a fifteen-minute walk south-east. Public car parks at Wharf Road and Bath Row are five minutes away.
3 St Mary’s Hill
Stamford
PE9 2DW
Yes. The Stamford desk publishes fixed fees on the most-instructed Private Client work: a straightforward single will, mirror wills for a couple, a single LPA, paired property-and-financial and health-and-welfare LPAs, and a fixed-fee Obtaining Probate option where the estate is genuinely straightforward. Where a taxable estate needs full administration we quote on hourly with a written estimate before any chargeable work begins.
Yes, this is the work the desk does most often. Sarah Westwood has fourteen years of probate experience with taxable estates and supervises the four-strong Private Client team. We will assess the residence nil-rate band and downsizing addition, the available transferable nil-rate band, business and agricultural reliefs where they apply, and the practical question of whether the family home is sold or transferred. The estate accounts are kept in writing throughout.
Yes. Andrea Harrod handles cross-border estate planning from the Stamford desk and Sarah Westwood reads German. The wider Buckles firm has offices in Paris and Milan and lawyers qualified in French, German, Spanish and Italian law, so the will can be drafted in coordination with a colleague qualified in the second jurisdiction. If a document needs notarial authentication for use abroad, the firm can route it through its notarial colleagues.
A declaration of trust between the two of you, recording the contributions each made to deposit and mortgage and how the equity is owned (joint tenants or tenants in common, with shares stated), is the first step. A pair of mirror wills naming each other comes next. If either has children from a previous relationship a life-interest trust over the family home is often the right structure. The Private Client desk drafts the declaration of trust; the family practitioner, Alex Hartnoll, can also draft a cohabitation agreement if there is more to record than the house alone.
The same firm. Buckles Solicitors LLP has offices in Bristol, Cambridge, London, Nottingham, Peterborough, Stamford, Paris and Milan, all under one SRA authorisation (number 419965). What you get at 3 St Mary’s Hill is a local five-lawyer desk on a 23-year continuity at the address, with the wider firm’s network available behind it when the work needs French, German, Spanish or Italian law or a Paris or Milan colleague.