MASTER
DAVID BALFOUR
David is a Chartered Accountant and spent most of his working life in the Dairy Industry. His last ten years were spent running The National Dairy Council, whose role was to promote and protect the Dairy Industry and its products, including acting for the whole dairy industry during the BSE crisis. He is perhaps the only Chartered Accountant to win an international marketing award.
He and Sue have lived in the same house in Gerrards Cross for over 50 years. He gardens on acid sand and it is therefore full of acid loving plants including rhododendrons, several grown from seed. A keen golfer, he has been Captain, First Team Captain and Chairman of his golf club and organised the Livery’s annual golf event for 12 years.
He is the elder son of Past Master Dick Balfour, joining the Livery in 2005, with his younger brother, Michael, following a year later. His younger daughter, Catriona, is also a Liveryman; hopefully she will not be the last of the younger generation to be so.
UPPER WARDEN
CINDY PECK
Cindy Peck is one of a select group of members of the Company who joined it by servitude, becoming a Freeman in 1973 and a Liveryman in 1986.
Cindy has had a distinguished career as a solicitor in the City of London specialising in commercial dispute resolution. She also has wide non executive experience. She is currently on a number of boards including Birkbeck College, University of London, the Architects Registration Board, Ofqual, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Perennial. She also undertakes fitness to practise work for the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service.
Cindy is married to Andrew Peck, who is a Freeman of the Company, and has two sons and a daughter.
UPPER WARDEN
ALDERMAN ROBERT HOWARD
Robert Howard has been a Liveryman since 1994. He joined the Court of Common Council of the City of London in 2011 as a Councilman, in the seat of Senior Past Master Christine Cohen, before joining the Court of Aldermen in 2015.
At the Corporation he has served on a number of committees including Open Spaces, Policy & Resources, Planning & Transportation and the Education Board. He is the Lead Member for Environmental Education and Chair of Governors of the City of London School for Girls. He was a governor of Capel Manor College in Enfield for a decade.
He has worked in the City since 1993 at Charles Stanley & Co Limited, where he leads on regulatory policy and change.
Robert is married to Magdalen and has three daughters. They live in Hackney.
SPADEBEARER
PHILIPPA BURROUGH
She has created an 11 acre garden in “drier than Jerusalem” Essex that has featured in articles, books and twice appeared on BBC Gardeners World. She has raised over £275,000 for charity by opening the garden and is visited by horticultural groups from home and abroad. The Garden won the East of England Favourite Garden for the NGS.
Philippa enjoys cooking, art, reading
and classical
music. A winter passion is National Hunt racing and the
Burrough colours have won the Grand and 3 other Nationals.
Bryan, her husband, is a Past
Master of the Distillers and
former High Sheriff of Essex.
CLERK
CHRISTINE RIGDEN
The Clerk acts as Chief Executive, and is responsible for managing the Company office and supporting the Master, Wardens and Court. The current Clerk, Christine Rigden, joined the Gardeners' Company in September 2025.
Christine was elected non-Aldermanic Sheriff in 2015, and annually as Ale Conner since 2007. She remains an active member of the Masons’ Company and the Tylers & Bricklayers. Outside the City, Christine has been involved in a number of professional, charitable and not-for-profit organisations including periods as a member of the Independent Monitoring Board for HMP Swaleside, a Council Member & Honorary Secretary (Science) of The Geological Society of London, and as Deputy Chairman of Kent Enterprise Trust.