50th Anniversary Dinner

The evening began with a welcome by Matt Manning, Managing Director of SbN Resort. Then Susanna Rendall, Group Managing Director of the Boxford Group, and Executive Chairman of the Stoke by Nayland Resort, briefly covered the 50-year journey for the venue which has grown from a modest golf club into the impressive Resort that we see today. Her speech was preceded by a remarkable short video taken from a 1971 Anglia TV documentary. This featured an interview with her parents and founders of the Golf Club, Bill and Devora Peake, about the creation of the Club as a diversification from their fruit and arable farm, and showed the construction of the first of two championship courses. This footage highlighted the huge challenges faced by the Peake’s and showed bare fields where the Resort now stands. The interview gave an opportunity for many of the guests to hear the voices of Bill and Devora for the first time, as Bill died in 1979 and Devora in 1999.

Alan Line, a past Club Captain and Veteran’s Captain, then gave a humorous account of being a longstanding member of Stoke by Nayland. The guest speaker was Sir Eric Peacock, an international entrepreneur who was Chairman of the family’s Boxford Group and SbN Resort for the past 9 years, and who gave an interesting insight into working with the different personalities on the family board. Finally, Susanna’s sisters and fellow directors, Carmella Meyer and Tamara Unwin both spoke, and then presented Susanna and their brother Jonathan Loshak with portraits to acknowledge their substantial contributions to the business over the past 50 years: Jonathan had managed the Golf Club from 1972 to 1992, and Susanna has been Group MD since that time. After dinner, guests enjoyed catching up and reminiscing, and taking a look at the memorabilia and photos on display, much of which had been carefully compiled by past Club Secretary, Peter Barfield.