Andrew Rutter's Retirement - TrustNews Summer 1998
It is hard to remember a time before Rutter. Andrew must have started attending our meetings soon after the first Local Government reorganisation in 1974 when he came to the City from the County Council with Jack Thompson, Winchester's first and last Director of Planning. They were a great team and it is a measure of his confidence in Andrew that Jack asked him to go to our monthly evening meetings, with the object of improving relations between the Trust and the Planning Department.
Andrew's own drawing of the Hampshire Hog made for him by
Maurine Wilbourn of the City Planning Department. He apparently
is delighted with it as it's rather how he sees himself
So Andrew has attended some 250 meetings in his spare time because it was for the good of Winchester. This has not been his only extra curricula activity; there are stories circulating that the police were troubled by lights burning in the Council Offices at 3 o'clock in the morning, and guess who it turned out to be! And I remember a Saturday morning when, spotting the unmistakable figure of Andrew striding up and down the High Street, umbrella under one arm and a bundle of white plastic bags under the other, I managed to persuade this Flying Dutchman to heave to and explain what on earth he was doing: pinning the white bags on the slopes of St Giles's Hill so that he could sketch the height of the proposed multi-storey car park for the Planning Committee, enabling its members to understand the effect the building would have on views from the Westgate! Andrew poo-poos this tale, but it's true.
It would be nice to think that the City Council has kept all his drawings - they would serve to paper the walls of the Guildhall from top to bottom as an instructive history of an eventful period in Winchester's development! Those of you who draw, have you ever tried to produce huge panoramas of townscape with imagined buildings drawn in to scale? Don't! It's fiendishly difficult and requires courage and perseverance of an exceptional kind.
There is so much else one should say about this remark¬able man, but with space for only a few more words, I must conclude by confirming that Andrew's attendance at our meetings has served Jack's purpose admirably well. The Trust has had a remarkably good working relationship with the Planners ever since, and this owes much to Andrew's ability to say what he believes must be said, to listen attentively to what we have to say and, whether in agreement or opposition to treat us with affection and respect. Which is exactly how we feel about him.
Enjoy your retirement Andrew. but please don't entirely abandon us or Winchester.