How it all started ........ in 1945 when
Mr. W.S.Marshall came down from Scotland to take over a Large Animal Veterinary Practice in Derby.

Mr. Marshall had trained at Edinburgh University and as a veterinary surgeon was in a reserved occupation during the war. He brought with him his wife of a few months, he says he only married her because he would need a receptionist but anyone who has ever seen them together will know how untrue that statement must be. There is no doubt that they were a formidable team and this was demonstrated by the rapid expansion of the Practice, which occurred in tandem with the expansion of the family. We have been Belper vets since a  branch surgery was also opened in Belper in 1953.

WALTER MARSHALL OBITUARY NOVEMBER 2010

Fast forward to 1974.
As part of their training, Veterinary Students are required to spend their holidays working to gain practical experience. In this way a youngster called Roger Till came to ‘see practice’, as it is called, with Mr. Marshall: Roger enjoyed it so much that he came back and back. When he qualified from Cambridge in 1976 and Mr. Marshall was needing a replacement Vet it seemed inevitable that they should join forces.
It seemed just as inevitable 2 years later that they should become partners.

When Mr. Marshall retired Roger Till became the sole proprietor of Marshall and Till, and ran the business single handed ( if you don’t count all the other people who worked there ) until his son Matthew qualified from Edinburgh University and another partnership was formed.

As administrative needs have changed, with business growth and government regulations, our clerical team became larger and eventually there was enough work of a purely financial nature to need a full time worker. We are fortunate that Matthew has a special interest in this area and has taken control of the finances, giving up his veterinary duties in order to do so.

Just before Matthew qualified we gained a new member of the Administrative team; Dominica Ward, generally known as Dom. She came to us from a high ranking secretarial position in a multi-national business and was appointed to the very important position of Co-Ordinator within the Practice. She was responsible for maintaining an overview of the running of the two surgeries, and was a lowly third below Roger and Matthew in the overall organising of the business! We are very fortunate that Dom with all her experience has joined us. It is even nicer because she has been a friend of the family of Roger’s wife Mary for more years than we are willing to disclose, but we will say that it is since Dom was 11.

By 2007 due to hard work, and a certain amount of good luck, Marshall and Till was still developing but the two surgeries were finding that clients’ requirements were becoming increasingly different between Derby and Belper.
We found that moving staff between the two surgeries had become a disadvantage rather than an advantage and so we split the two surgeries in order to better serve the needs of our Belper clients. A year later it was decided to concentrate solely on the Belper surgery and sell the Derby surgery. The Belper surgery retains the name Marshall and Till. The old Derby surgery has been renamed and is now a separate business in which neither Roger nor Matthew have any interest.

In 2008 we were joined by Katherine Reynolds as an assistant veterinary surgeon, and in 2010 she repeated Roger’s early meteoric rise through the ranks when she became a director of the company.
Katherine, Roger and Mary are now the ultimate ‘authorities’ at Belper, supported by Dom as Practice Administrator.
 

Belper Surgery
This surgery is now staffed by two Veterinary Surgeons (plus Roger and occasionally Matthew), two Veterinary Nurses, two Receptionists and Dom our Practice Administrator, with Roger and his wife Mary lurking in the background or foreground, as required.

    Dom                                                 Mary

Our Vets are Roger; Vanessa Miller, who has worked for Marshall and Till almost as long as Roger has been there; and Katherine Reynolds. Matthew fills in when someone is away on a course or on holiday or poorly - either as a vet, a nurse or a receptionist.

         
       Roger

 Mr. Roger Till qualified from Cambridge in 1976, in which year he won the Lawson, Walley and Williams Prize from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. After the retirement of Mr. Marshall he was the sole proprietor of the practice until his son Matthew qualified as a Vet and became a partner. Roger Till has always ‘specialised’ in developing a broad understanding rather than an in depth, but narrow, expertise. This approach, coupled with many years experience, allows him to easily identify cases which would benefit from the attentions of one of our ‘in house experts’. He was the Radio Derby vet for over 25 years, has written a column for the Belper edition of the Derby Evening Telegraph and even appeared on TV in Tomorrow’s World and in a Rolf Harris show on Channel 4 (and half a dozen appearances on Central News).He rates his best media moments as hosting live phone-ins from The Ideal Home Exhibition (!) at Olympia, and The Official Opening of The Heanor Market Place Superloo on a very wet and windy day in winter. But fame is fleeting! He was also the first person to diagnose Maedi/Visna in sheep in this country and published a paper on this in the Veterinary Record (wow!)
His most recent enthusiasm is acupuncture and he is a member of the Association of British Veterinary Acupuncturists and the Western Veterinary Acupuncture Group. Find out about M&T Acupuncture here

Vanessa

Mrs. Vanessa Miller has a particular interest in dermatology ( problems of the skin). She has been with us since she qualified from Bristol in 1978, although she has only worked part-time since she became a mother (we let her have a day and a half off every week). Her son is now ‘grown up’. She is a Past Chairman of The British Veterinary Dermatology Study Group. Vanessa has also developed a particular expertise with rabbit dental work.

 
Katherine

Miss Katherine Reynolds joined us in July 2008 from the University of Liverpool. She was brought up in Melton Mowbray (rather like Belper she says, but a tad South and a tad East) but has now happily adapted to living in Belper. She has a knack of attracting, and solving, unusual cases. She, like Roger, is interested in Veterinary Acupuncture and is a member of the Association of British Veterinary Acupuncturists and the Western Veterinary Acupuncture Group. She became a director in October 2010.

Matthew

Mr. Matthew Till qualified from the University of Edinburgh in 2003 and immediately joined the practice. He remained at  Derby when the surgery divided, until the Derby practice was sold. He now multitasks as a stand-in veterinary surgeon, nurse or receptionist when needed, as well as dealing with our financial records.

Mr. Andrew Whittingham is our Visiting Referral Surgeon, who holds a R.C.V.S. Certificate in Small Animal  Surgery. He comes to the Practice to see surgical cases, mainly orthopaedics, which we would otherwise have to refer to distant referral centres.  This reduces travel stress for the animals and keeps the cost down for owners.

Both of our Nurses have spent almost all their working lives at Marshall and Till. They both came to us as trainees  and rapidly qualified as Veterinary Nurses after a two year work and college education. They have both gained a wealth of experience since qualifying and are “Registered Veterinary Nurses”. Although many people work as “nurses” in veterinary practice not all of them have gained their qualifications, and as you can see from the link above not all qualified nurses take the step to become registered. As registered nurses they are bound by strict standards of professional ethics and are committed to undertaking continuing professional development. We know we have two of the best nurses in the business!

June Easom is the Head Nurse at Belper and has never worked anywhere else since she joined us as a young girl. Being the wife of a farmer she of course works very hard in that capacity too.

                                         
 June                                                             Lynn

Lynn is our other Nurse. She too came to us as a young girl but worked for a short while with another Practice before returning to us. She was brought up in Belper and so seems to know everyone who walks into the surgery.

Our two Receptionists have been with us for years. They were both our clients before later becoming employees so have a good understanding of what clients find important!
They are Jenny Radford and Jan Harrison.

                      
Jenny                                               Jan

We are all local people, we have all lived in this area for 30 years or more, except Katherine, and we believe this helps us understand what the community needs.
We are happy that we can provide such stability for our clients because we firmly believe that the best care can only be provided when continuity of care can be established.

And finally the one member of staff who keeps everyone else cheerful

Stevie

Stevie (don’t ask me why he’s called that) was a stray brought to us one cold winter’s day barely alive (or so we thought). We haven’t been able to find his owner so he’s been adopted as the surgery pet and he now lives in reception. Beware - on a good day you may need earplugs!