Welcome from Peter Burman and Ross Burgess!
We've created this site as a portal to some of our interests and activities.
Our story
We were an item many years ago, but drifted apart and had other relationships. Peter had moved from London to York, then Edinburgh, and finally to the historic village of Falkland, Fife. Ross had been living in Purley in the London Borough of Croydon since 1992 (latterly with his first husband, Roger Burg, until Roger's death from cancer). By the end of 2018 we were both single, and re-kindled our relationship. We were married in June 2019, with a Humanist wedding in Falkland, followed by a re-affirmation of vows at the Unitarian Church in Croydon. For a couple of years we divided our time between Purley amd Falkland, but in June 2022 Ross sold his house in Purley, and we both permanently settled north of the border, with a historic house in Falkland, Fife, and new for 2023. a flat in the Inverleith area of Edinburgh, very near the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Despite no longer having to do the long journey between Falkland and Purley, we still find that our various other activities take us here and there, and we much enjoy visiting friends in different parts of the UK and overseas.
Ross had a long career as an IT consultant, and subsequently maintained websites (trading as 'Foxearth IT Solutions') for a variety of organisations, but he's now aiming to shed much of this work, while still doing a little book editing and publishing. Peter is now on the Buildings Committee of our local Scottish Episcopal Church, St James's Goldenacre.
Peter has had an interesting career as an academic – he still classes many of his former students at the Universities of York and Cottbus among his special friends – and in his work with historic buildings and those who look after them.
Ongoing activities
We're both very active in our local community. Peter is Chair, and Ross is Secretary, of the Falkland Society – our monthly Zoom meetings with interesting speakers attract an audience from Fife and beyond and even overseas. Living in a Category A listed building, we have a special interest in the history and historic buildings of our village and further afield. Ross edited a major book about Falkland and its people in the early 20th century, and maintains the Falkland Wiki (plus several other websites).
We take inspiration from the works of John Ruskin, many of whose ideas have a special relevance for today. We're both Companions of the Guild of St George – the charity for arts, crafts and the rural economy, founded by Ruskin in 1871. Peter is a director of the Guild, and organised a major online conference about Venice and its problems in April 2022.
Ross was active for many years in LGBT+ organisations, in Croydon and nationally, and is one of the editors of the the UK LGBT Archive, an online encyclopaedia of British LGBT+ people and events from the earliest times. We are both founding trustees of a new educational charity, the CHE Research Trust, dedicated to recording and documenting the history of the struggle for LGBT+ rights.
There's an article about Peter, his accomplishments and his publications, on Wikipedia.
