It is with a heavy heart we announced that Jeremy Saunders, born 21^st July 1965, sadly passed away, peacefully and with his family around him, in the late evening of Monday 19^th November 2024 at Brighton Hospital. 

Having undergone his education at Maidstone Grammar School, Jeremy led a very successful career in media sales for over 30 years. He sat as the Arts & Entertainment Director for the Time Out Group between 2010 and 2016, moving on to act as the Executive Account Manager for Balance Magazine in 2017. In 2020, Jeremy attended Plumpton College to retrain in countryside management, where he knew his heart truly belonged. 

Outside of his career, Jeremy volunteered for The Samaritans and Croydon County Council, while working closely with the Downlands Trust in Northeast Surrey and South London. During the school holidays, Jeremy would also often take time off work to teach at a woodcraft school. 

It was in September 2021 when Jeremy first started with the National Trust, as Ranger for Limpsfield Common. His warm disposition and charismatic personality quickly endeared him to colleagues and volunteers alike.

In 2023, he began as the Area Ranger for Reigate and Oxted Downs. He always had big plans and endless enthusiasm to shape his sites into what they deserved. His honesty and humour were the perfect recipe to bring people together, making him an amazing volunteer leader and member of the Surrey Hills family. 

It was in 2023 when Jeremy took me under his wing. Patient, protective, thoughtful and forever supportive, his unwavering mentorship will always be treasured. Despite the day it had been, or the difficulties I was having, he always knew the right thing to say to put a smile on my face, whether it was telling me of the good job I had done, or the simple reassurance that tomorrow is a new day.

Lately, words written in Maya Angelou’s When Great Trees Fall have resonated strongly – “When great souls die… Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.” 

The Task Force, Friends of Limpsfield Common and I, will ensure that his legacy lives on amongst The Chart, and that his favourite spaces stay preserved, but often visited, so that we may remind ourselves of how blessed we were to be part of Jeremy’s last years, while he was doing what he loved most. 

– Conor

When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Maya Angelou