Terry Last was installed as the Master of the Worshipful Company of Paviors at a ceremony in St Martin -within-Ludgate on 5 March 2015.

Terry was born in Suffolk, where he still lives with his wife, Caroline, on a small 100-acre farm. Caroline manages an equestrian centre on the farm and crops about 65 acres of hay every year. Having both been married twice, Terry and Caroline have six children and five grandchildren between them. He became a Liveryman in 1996. After attending the grammar school in Bury St Edmunds, Terry took up an opportunity to attend Doncaster College of Technology as part of a three-year sandwich course and left in 1971 with a Diploma in Quarrying Engineering.

Terry’s first employer was Wimpey Asphalt Ltd, working on a number of projects around the UK, before spending nearly three years in the West Indies. In Grenada, he worked on the renovation of the airport that was later used by the Americans when they invaded the island several years later. In 1975, he worked in Northern Ireland for Wimpey Asphalt, before returning in 1978 to manage a quarry for his second employer, ARC, near Oswestry in Shropshire. In 1980, he was seconded to ARC Nigeria to help complete some failing road and airport construction projects. On returning to the UK, a succession of promotions led to him running a region of the ARC business from an office in Frome, Somerset. Over the next two decades, Terry worked for Hanson and Aggregate Industries in a variety of senior positions, before joining Tarmac in 2001. From 2008 until the end of 2012, he ran the whole of the Tarmac UK core business as its Chief Executive.

Terry is a Governor of Thomas Telford school in Shropshire and the Milton Keynes Academy. He has written several papers and given a number of presentations relevant to his industry. Terry is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Quarrying, having held office as both Chairman and President. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Asphalt Technology and the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation. Terry was honoured to receive an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from Wolverhampton University in 2012. He enjoys music, theatre and watching sport in his spare time. Since hip-resurfacing operations, Terry is restricted to keeping fit by long-distance walking and cycling. He walked with his three sons and a son-in-law to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010 to celebrate his 60th birthday and to raise money for charity.

 

Master’s aims for the year:

  1. To maintain and improve our financial stability, by improving membership beyond 300, by championing some successful high attendance events and by sponsorship of the same! I will also continue to plead for the Paviors to be remembered in our wills!
  2. Continue our charitable giving, in particular by the progression and successes of our own London Highways Academy of Excellence. My Master’s Charity for the year is The Kids Company, which does so much for the disadvantaged and I also hope to be able to make a significant contribution to them.
  3. Maintain support for our precious links with our Affiliates. From the close contact I have already had I know how much we are appreciated by them.
  4. Improve the way we communicate with each other and the outside world.

We live in an age when the Internet has become such an essential part of so many people’s lives, that we would be backward if we don’t do more than we do at present. Our revamped website is nearly ready and we have platforms created in Facebook and LinkedIn. Please visit them when you can. I intend to be a regular contributor of articles to tell of what your Master does during his year of office. In addition, the Court has approved the making of a short video to help publicise all that we stand for and all that we do. This should be completed and available later this year.

In summary, my theme for the year is “Fellowship and Communication” and I am lucky to be able to build on what has already been achieved by my predecessors and all the rest of us.

The Paviors have a huge amount to be proud of. We are vibrant and successful, and are envied by many. I, and my Mistress, will attend as many Livery linked events as we can during the year and we will be proud to represent you and extol the Paviors’ virtues.

 

From the Past Master

I am now definitely on the down slope of my Master’s year and have very mixed feelings about it! As Master I have had some fantastic invitations from outside and I have thoroughly enjoyed being Master at all of our regular Court and Committee meetings, as well as at our many Functions. I include in the latter, functions organised by our associated Pavior organisations, the Luncheon Club, the Wine Circle and the Golf Society to name the most obvious ones. The enjoyment enjoyed by both me and on many occasions my accompanying Mistress, has often been exhilarating and we will both miss it all very much. On the other hand, it has sometimes been exhausting, particularly as I’ve had to work around a much more active work life than I anticipated. We are both looking forward to a break after the Installation of the new Master on March 2nd.

Many times I have been asked to name my or our favourite event so far! It is very difficult to choose one, but soon after the installation, every Master gets an invitation to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Mansion House, and that is the first time the Master and Mistress get to understand what they have become part of, when they meet many of the Masters and Consorts from all of the other Livery Companies. It is a full on pomp and circumstance occasion without being unnecessarily formal, and it is rounded off the next day by the United Guilds’ Service at St Paul’s Cathedral, again in the company of all the other Masters, and that is followed by a lovely lunch with our old mates the Cutlers in their lovely Cutlers’ Hall!

On from that, the Ironbridge weekend, where we got to really know those other Masters and their Consorts, was great fun. I was also very honoured to be at Runnymede Meadow 800 years to the day that King John sealed Magna Carta and at Westminster Abbey to celebrate 600 years to the day that London got the news of Henry Vth’s success at Agincourt are times that will stick in the memory forever.

What would I change or do better? Very little! There are always improvements possible, and I have been very grateful for some honest feedback that will help my successors better tailor expectations, and we heard more about that at Common Hall on January 14th. I’m not sure now I would rather the Master’s Jolly had gone better to plan, and I don’t regret having Camilla Batmangheilah to speak at the Spring Livery Dinner.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Kids Company, we do have some potentially disastrous consequences if we don¹t find ways of helping disadvantaged and perturbed children, and we must continue to be as charitable as we can to help change an otherwise drastic turn in our society’s history.

Thank you all for all your support and friendship over the year, and I wish my successor Ian Lumsden all the best for his year.

Terry Last