A Move Up the Hill

After eight years at 15 Bell Street, Edale has taken the short walk up to a new home on Castle Walk.

Eight years is a long time in any business — long enough to put down roots, weather a pandemic, see clients’ children grow into adults, and host more cups of coffee than we’d care to count.

15 Bell Street has been good to us. It’s where Edale grew from a small cross-border advisory practice into the firm we are today: advising US citizens, dual nationals and American expats on the particular puzzles of living between two tax systems. The Bell Street door has welcomed clients from Reigate, from London, from across the Atlantic, and from rather further afield than we ever first imagined. We have grown a variety of business channels.

But every firm eventually outgrows its walls, and ours have been quietly straining for a while now. So, as of this month, we have a new front door. Same town. Same team. A short walk up the hill.

A door on the Castle Grounds

If you’ve ever wandered up from Reigate High Street into the Castle Grounds — past the old caves, the castle ruins, through the oldest tunnel in the UK, the steps that climb up from the High Street by Boots (or the really large steps near the Market Stores) — you’ll already know the corner of town we’ve moved to. It is one of the most distinctive spots in Reigate: a quiet ridge of buildings that sits above the bustle of the High Street on one side, and opens directly onto the historic Castle Grounds on the other.

58 Castle Walk has the unusual quality of being central without feeling central. From our new front door, you can be on the High Street in a couple of minutes; turn the other way, and you’re walking through a 17th-century castle’s gardens. It is a building with two faces — one looking out over the town below, the other looking back at centuries of Reigate history.

For a firm whose work is largely about helping clients hold two things in balance:

• the US side and the UK side,
• living and working in different places
• facing life-altering events after a financial event
• life as it is now, and the one being planned for

Whatever that could be, it feels rather appropriate.

Why the move

A few honest reasons.

1. We needed more space. The cross-border work has grown steadily, and we now have a small team where once there was a desk in the corner. Meeting rooms that comfortably fit a couple no longer comfortably fit a family, making careful decisions about a transatlantic move.
2. We wanted somewhere that felt like Reigate. We could have taken a unit in a business park. We could have decamped to a serviced office somewhere off the M25. But our clients tend to like that we are a Reigate firm — local enough to meet face-to-face, established enough to have been here for years — and we wanted to stay in the grain of the town.
3. Partner growing and needing space in. We had occupied the offices with an accountant who needed extra space, and so all dovetailed.

Castle Walk ticked both boxes, and then some.

What stays the same

Everything that matters. The team is the same. The phone number is the same. Your adviser is the same. Edale UK Management Limited remains authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our approach to cross-border financial planning — the careful, dual-system, no-shortcuts work we have been doing since 20114 — is unchanged.

What is different is the address on our letterhead and the view from the meeting-room window.

Come and see us

If you are an existing client, you will receive a separate note from us with the practical details — parking, the easiest approach on foot, and the new office layout in the new address. If you are thinking about working with us, we would be delighted to welcome you to Castle Walk for a coffee and a conversation. It is a good spot for both.

Eight years on Bell Street. A new chapter on Castle Walk. The work, as ever, continues.

Our new address: Edale 58 Castle Walk, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9PX.