Meet Me: Jonathan Potter (Chair)

                                       DM, FRCP

                                       I have been a Consultant Geriatrician and Stroke                                                         Physician at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital from 1984 to 2009. The role provided the opportunity to gain an understanding of the health and social challenges facing older people. I also gained organisational experience in developing services and running a department within the hospital.

Outside the Hospital I gained further organisational and management experience at a national level as Treasurer of the British Geriatrics Society and Clinical Director of the Royal College of Physicians “Research Unit”.

A large part of my career has been committed to research, which has provided experience in seeking and obtaining funds as well as in project management in carrying out and seeing through to completion a wide range of projects.

My wife and I, having lived on the outskirts of Canterbury for 40 years and raised our family here, have been privileged to live in a city with such a remarkable history. It is a great pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to try and contribute something, however minor, to preserving and maintaining that history.

                                     Meet Me: Jane Carey-Harris (Trustee)
                                              Deputy Lieutenant, Nurse, Veteran, and Community Member.

                                                  I’m honoured to serve as one of the trustees at St John’s and                                                      St Nicholas’ Almshouses. My life has always been rooted in                                                         service, and I feel privileged to continue that through this                                                                incredible charity.

I trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and spent 40 years working in the NHS. Alongside that, I served for 38 years in the Army Reserves. One of the highlights of my military career was commanding a national medical unit and being appointed the Queen’s Honorary Nurse for the Territorial Army in 2012.

Since retiring to Canterbury in 2013, I’ve remained actively involved in the community. I support the Royal British Legion, especially during the annual Poppy Appeal, and I serve on the Southeast Reserve Forces and Cadets Association. I’m also a Liveryman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and The Worshipful Company of Nurses, where I served as Master from May 2024 to May 2025. Outside of my trustee work, I enjoy going for walks and playing bowls at my local club, where I was Lady Captain in 2023.

In 2020, I joined St John’s and St Nicholas’ as a Trustee. A fellow Apothecary encouraged me to attend a Zoom meeting during the pandemic, and I was immediately drawn to the charity’s mission. My focus is on our indwellers and residents—I aim to be a listening ear and a reassuring presence. I regularly attend resident meetings and help to welcome new arrivals with warmth and care.

My background as an NHS manager has been useful, especially when meeting potential residents or assisting in the appointment of new Trustees. One of the most rewarding parts of the role is seeing the smile on someone’s face when they’re welcomed into the almshouses.

I love taking part in the charity’s events—Feast Days and Remembrance Sunday are particular favourites. A special moment for me was in 2023 when I had the honour of representing the Lord Lieutenant at the St John’s Remembrance Service. I was very proud to do this, and I hope the residents were very proud of one of their Trustees, and to see a resident with a naval background stand smartly upright as we remembered those who served brought a lump to my throat.

 It was deeply moving and meant a great deal to both me and the community.

Being a part of this charity is a joy. I’m proud to contribute my experience and heart to the work we do every day.

                         Meet Me: Michael Fletcher (Trustee)

                                     Michael Fletcher was educated at the King's School,                                                   Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,                                                     where he read law. He was articled at Lee Bolton &                                                     Lee, being admitted as a solicitor in 1982, and became                                             a partner in the firm in 1986 and a consultant to the               successor firm Lee Bolton Monier-Wiliams LLP in 2021. He was Senior Partner   of LBMW from 2016 to 2020.                                            

Michael for many years advised on all aspects of private client, wealth and tax work for a very wide range of private individuals and family estates; in addition to which he also has considerable experience in the areas of ecclesiastical property and charities. He was the Clerk to the Hospitals of St John The Baptist and St Nicholas Canterbury for over thirty years, and on his retirement as Clerk became a Trustee of the Hospitals, and for over forty years was the secretary and solicitor to the Trustees of the Pooh Properties, who manage the copyrights in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and poems of A A Milne on behalf of the (largely charitable) beneficiaries under Milne’s Will. He was also until 2025 a trustee of an estate in the West Midlands which is managed on behalf of multiple beneficiaries, who are a mixture of the descendants of the original family owners and two large Canadian charities. He lives in London and travels regularly to Canterbury for meetings of the Trustees of the Hospitals.  He is also a trustee of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall in London, of which he has been a member since 1979, and chairs the Wine Committee of the Club.

Interests include music (especially opera); food and drink; and transport systems, especially inland waterways and the railways of India and elsewhere in the former British Empire.

                                                         Meet Me: David Boshier (Trustee)

                                                            Retired Chartered Surveyor

                                       I was born in Herne Bay in the early 1960’s before                                                       spending my senior school years in North Wales. I returned to Kent in 1980, attended the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester before starting work with Hobbs Parker as a graduate surveyor. I qualified in 1987 as a Chartered Surveyor and work eventually took me to Norfolk in 1996 where my family and I had 26 happy years before I retired in 2021. I moved back to Kent in 2022 and finally to Canterbury in 2023 where my wife, Tina, and I now live. We have two grown up children, Jessica & Christopher, and one granddaughter, Imogen.

Before retirement, I was a Partner in Boshier & Company, Chartered Surveyors, a specialist firm of property consultants who dealt exclusively within the health sector. The Company provided valuation, development and estates advice, including Landlord & Tenant matters, to NHS England, NHS Property Services Limited and NHS Trusts.

I am a keen golfer and National Hunt horse racing follower; member of Kent CCC; hold a valid SEP private pilot’s licence; a regular walker and member of Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory Trust; hold a DBS enhanced certificate; and Chairman of a property company in Lincolnshire.

                                                                        Meet Me: John Cotterill (Vice Chair)

                                  Nurse (Retired), Director and Senior Manager of Care Services and

                                  Charities.

                                     In 2016 I was appointed by The Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a trustee of St John’s and St Nicholas’ Almshouses. I have lived about 50 yards from the St Nicholas Chapel since the early 1990s and I had known the place and people well for many a year. Our son was christened in St Nicholas chapel.

My wife led a number of fund-raising projects and activities at St Michael’s in Harbledown and was asked if she’d be interested in becoming a trustee of The Hospitals. When the role was described to her, she said that, bearing in mind my business and management capabilities, I’d probably be better suited. So here I am.

I grew up in Stockton on Tees, a town that had one foot in Durham and one in North Yorkshire. I was House Captain of Canterbury House at my Church School, which I always reflect in some way seems to have led me South. When I was young, I sang in Durham Cathedral and at Middlesbrough Football Club. The lyrics were different, but the passion was the same level at each. I still have a season ticket to follow ‘The Boro’ now. Sadly, my singing is no longer what it once was and The Boro hasn’t much improved either. Heigh ho.

I got my first care assistant role aged 17 and then qualified as a Registered Nurse at a hectic set of General Hospitals in Essex. Specialisms ITU, Theatre, A&E were my thing at first. Aged 24, I set up an agency principally to provide specialist nurses to these areas. Very 80s of me! I sold it and settled down into care home management with charities; 4 years at The Royal British Legion as Head of Care and 23 years leading and directing care for Strode Park Foundation. I’m proud of my achievements with both. I think I supported and enabled a lot of people to live better quality lives than they otherwise would have. As a career summary, that’ll do me.

As I’ve aged, my mobility has become poor and so I have firsthand, as well as professional, insight into the challenges disability brings to daily life. Unfortunately, some parts of the Hospitals are now out of reach for me, particularly at St Nicholas.

I’m proud to be Vice-Chairman of trustees and to support the Hospitals’ management in caring for The Hospitals and their future. As a trustee I focus my efforts on ensuring that The Hospitals are fit for their future. I will do my best to help ensure their historic ability to support people in need is secured and sustainable far into the future. Maybe even for another thousand years!

                 Meet Me: Richard Cullen (Trustee)

                                      PGCE, MA (Applied Linguistics), MA by Research (American History)

                                     I am a retired University lecturer from Canterbury Christ Church                                               University (CCCU), where I was Head of the School of English and                                           Language Studies from 2007 – 2017. The first part of my career                                             was spent overseas working first as a teacher (Nepal, Greece) and     then as a consultant for the British Council on educational projects  in Egypt, Bangladesh and Tanzania.  On returning to the UK in 1996, my wife and I settled with our two sons in Canterbury.

My work for the British Council and at CCCU has given me experience in organisational and project management, as well as strategic planning and development, all which have been useful and relevant to the role of a Trustee of the Hospitals of St John’s and St Nicholas’s. 

I also have a particular interest in the rich history of the Hospitals, as well as their extraordinary collection of historical artefacts.  My first degree was in History, a subject to which I recently returned after enrolling at Kent University to do an MA by Research.  Being involved in an organisation with such a remarkable history is thus a huge privilege, and in my time as a Trustee I have been closely involved in work to conserve its treasures and have them valued and catalogued.  Furthermore, my work in education has underlined the value of making any subject – and history in particular -  interesting and accessible to others.  To that end, I am keen to explore ways of bringing the rich heritage of the Hospitals to a wider public while at the same time respecting the privacy of the residents and ensuring the safety of the artefact themselves.        

            Meet me: Tony Amlot (Trustee)

                                   I have been a resident in the Canterbury area for most of my life                                             having schooled in the city and subsequently trained and qualified as                                     a Chartered Accountant with a local firm in 1981.

Apart from a brief period away, I spent the remainder of my career as a partner in a firm in the city and was fortunate enough to have the responsibility for acting for the two predecessor charities to the present organisation. This has given me almost 40 years of experience of the hospitals and upon my retirement from business, I was asked if I would like to become a trustee of the charities.

In addition to work I played both rugby and cricket for clubs in the area for a number of years and made friends during which I made connections with a great many local people both socially and professionally.

My wife and I have raised our children in the area and now enjoy the company of two grandchildren, who also live locally.

                                                          Meet Me: Emma Salvatore (Trustee)

                                   I am a solicitor specialising in housing and residential landlord and                                       tenant law. I work within a busy team at Trowers & Hamlins, a large,                                       international law firm with a focus on all things property related. With many years of experience under my belt, I enjoy mentoring and training our junior lawyers and  encouraging their development.

My work is very varied, and I work with a broad range of clients. I often advise on issues affecting development of land and estate regeneration, as well as dealing with residential possession claims, housing management and leasehold disputes.

I have worked with a number of almshouse providers, which gives me a good understanding of the almshouse model and the expectations of the Almshouse Association. This is the reason why I thought I might be able to add some value volunteering as a trustee to the Hospitals, a role which I am really enjoying.

My husband and I are lucky enough to live in Whitstable, a town which I have loved since my first visit. When I'm not at my desk, I can often be found walking on the beach or in the surrounding woodland with my trusted companion – Charley the cocker spaniel.