Chichester solicitors since around 1730 · 50 Westgate · ten minutes from the Cathedral
01243 780211 | gregwoods@smrsolicitors.co.uk
SMR Solicitors Chichester · since 1730 Request a call back

◆ Chichester · since around 1730 · Lexcel & CQS accredited

Chichester solicitors, since the year Walpole was Prime Minister.

SMR Solicitors traces its practice to around 1730, when the firm we were before us, Rapers, opened on North Pallant. In 1829 the firm moved to West Street, opposite the Cathedral. In 2001 Rapers merged with Stone Milward, and in 2009 the merged firm took 50 Westgate. The Chichester and District Law Society lists us as the city’s oldest solicitors. Twenty-three lawyers and staff now work across four offices, with five Directors and ten Solicitors between Chichester, Selsey, East Wittering and Bognor Regis.

Request a call back See our practice areas
1730 296 years in Chichester
II Between two Grade II listed neighbours
CQS Conveyancing Quality Scheme
5.0★ ReviewSolicitors, Chichester
50 WESTGATE · ELEVATION Chichester, West Sussex GEORGIAN CONSERVATION AREA · CONTINUOUS LISTED ROW BETWEEN 46 TO 48 WESTGATE · AND WESTGATE HOUSE, 52 WESTGATE

50 Westgate · in the Chichester conservation area · ten minutes’ walk from the Cathedral spire.

Practice areas · four desks, four offices

Twenty-three lawyers and staff across Chichester, Selsey, East Wittering, Bognor Regis.

A West Sussex coastal network, run from one Georgian building on Westgate. Same fixed-fee discipline, same named lead from instruction to completion, whichever of the four desks opens your file.

Property

Residential & Commercial Conveyancing

Conveyancing Quality Scheme accredited. Sale and purchase, re-mortgage, transfer of equity, lease extension, first registration. Fixed-fee quotes before instruction. Commercial conveyancing for owner-managed businesses and small landlords. Listed-building and conservation-area work handled in-house, drawing on the firm’s own experience of Westgate’s Grade II listed terrace.

Sarah Evans (Chichester) · Jannette Luker (East Wittering) · Adele Faithfull · Ellie Kyte · Lizzie Spraggs · Julie Molloy (Selsey) · Bernadette Kelly · Emma Kelly

Private Client

Wills, Probate & Estates

STEP-member private-client solicitors. Will drafting, estate administration on taxable and non-taxable estates, Lasting Powers of Attorney, inheritance-tax planning, trust drafting, deputyship applications, Court of Protection. Home visits for elderly clients. The firm is an Alzheimer’s Society partner practice, so the elderly-client desk is committed to dementia-aware procedure.

Greg Woods (Chichester) · Matthew Field (Bognor Regis) · Caroline Barnes (Selsey) · Sarah Baker-Brown · April Gullis · Elizabeth Osmend · Charlotte Slingo

Family

Family & Divorce

Resolution-member family solicitors. Divorce and dissolution, financial settlement and pension-sharing orders, child arrangements, pre-nuptial agreements, separation, cohabitation, domestic-abuse protective orders. First call to final order with the same named lead, supervised by the Head of Family.

Sara-Jayne Fildes (Head of Family) · Ruth Harding · Charlotte Attwood

Business

Commercial Property & Business

Commercial conveyancing for business buyers, leases for landlords and tenants, lease drafting, property-related contracts. Worked alongside the residential and private-client desks for owner-managed business transitions and family-business succession planning.

Stephen Brown · Sarah Evans · Greg Woods

Heritage · 1730 · 1829 · 2009

Three Chichester addresses. One firm.

SMR is the contraction of three names: Stone, Milward and Rapers. Rapers is the older line, begun in Chichester around 1730 from North Pallant, the south-east quadrant of the walled city, when George II was two years on the throne and Robert Walpole was Prime Minister. The Solicitors Regulation Authority would not exist for another 277 years.

In 1829 Rapers left North Pallant and moved to West Street, the cathedral-frontage thoroughfare. The firm kept that address for the next 180 years, through the day in February 1861 when the spire of Chichester Cathedral telescoped in on itself one mid-morning without warning, through Sir George Gilbert Scott’s rebuilding of it in 1866, and through every Chichester general election from the 1832 Reform Act forward.

In the early 1990s Roger Stone and Martin Milward founded Stone Milward, a parallel Chichester practice. In 2001 the two firms merged. In 2009 the merged firm took 50 Westgate, on the city’s most cohesive Georgian street, between two Grade II listed neighbours: 46-48 Westgate to the west, and Westgate House (52 Westgate) to the east, begun for John Edes in 1693 and finished by his widow in 1696. The Chichester and District Law Society lists SMR as the city’s oldest solicitors firm.

Tracing our roots to around 1730, we are the oldest solicitors firm in Chichester.

SMR Solicitors, on every page since 2009

The historic deeds of Raper & Co are lodged at the West Sussex Record Office in the “Raper Uncatalogued Archive”, and at the National Archives under catalogue F201784. We are not a 2026 firm with a historical anecdote in the footer. We are the firm whose deed archive is the historical anecdote, with a 2026 desk over it.

Chichester Cathedral from the south-east, late afternoon. The spire (rebuilt by Sir George Gilbert Scott, 1866) rises 277 feet above the city. Photographed by Len Williams, 2012.
Chichester Cathedral · Len Williams, 2012 · CC BY-SA 2.0

277 ft

Cathedral spire · the only English medieval cathedral spire visible from the sea

Specialism · the setting is the brief

Conservation-area conveyancing from inside the conservation area.

50 Westgate sits in the middle of one of Chichester’s most cohesive Georgian listed terraces. Our western neighbour at 46-48 Westgate is Grade II listed. Our eastern neighbour at 52 Westgate, Westgate House, is Grade II listed and was begun in 1693 for John Edes and finished by his widow in 1696. The street follows the route of the road that left the Roman city through the West Gate; the medieval gate was demolished in 1773 and the south pintle still stands a few minutes’ walk away. In 1762 the road became the Chichester-to-Cosham turnpike, which paid for the re-paving and drainage that let it become the Georgian thoroughfare it is today.

Owning a listed property in a Chichester conservation area is its own legal trade. Our conveyancing team have spent careers on:

  • Listed-building consent and Article 4 directions. What the Conservation Officer expects to see on a window-replacement, doorcase, or rear-extension application within a hundred yards of our own front door.
  • Older title and pre-Land-Registry conveyances. Our institutional memory reaches back through three centuries of West Sussex deed-drafting; the firm’s historic deeds are lodged at the West Sussex Record Office. Enfranchisement, lease extension, and Land Registration Act first-registration work is bread-and-butter.
  • Multi-generation private client. Many of our clients come from families who have used us across three or four generations. STEP-member solicitors on the private-client desk; Alzheimer’s Society partnership on the elderly-client desk.

SRA 630293·Lexcel·CQS·STEP·Resolution·Alzheimer’s Society

Directors · the named lead runs the file

Five Directors across four offices.

Sarah Evans

Director · Residential Conveyancing

Chichester

Heads the Chichester residential conveyancing desk. Commercial Property and Residential Property.

Greg Woods

Director · Private Client

Chichester

Wills, Probate, Lasting Powers of Attorney and Elderly Client. STEP member.

Matthew Field

Director · Private Client

Bognor Regis

Wills, Probate and Elderly Client. Leads the Bognor Regis office.

Jannette Luker

Director · Residential Conveyancing

East Wittering

Residential and Commercial Property. Heads the East Wittering office.

Caroline Barnes

Director · Private Client

Selsey

Wills, Probate and Elderly Client. Heads the Selsey office.

Plus Sarah Baker-Brown, Stephen Brown, Adele Faithfull, Sara-Jayne Fildes (Head of Family), April Gullis, Ruth Harding, Julie Molloy, Elizabeth Osmend, Charlotte Slingo, Bernadette Kelly, Ellie Kyte, Lizzie Spraggs, Emma Kelly, Graeme Moore (Finance Director), Charlotte Attwood and Sam Cullen (Office Manager).

Request a call back · usually same working day

Tell us what you need. We will call you back.

Every enquiry is read by one of the five Directors. The same named lead then opens your file and closes it. We do not pass enquiries to a centralised intake desk.

Or call us on 01243 780211.

Visit · by appointment or walk-in

50 Westgate, Chichester.

Address

50 Westgate
Chichester
West Sussex · PO19 3HE

Phone & fax

Tel 01243 780211
Fax 01243 782619

Email

gregwoods@smrsolicitors.co.uk

Opening

Mon to Fri, 9 to 5. Home visits for Wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney by arrangement.
Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Parking & transport

Visitor parking at the office, plus on-street one-hour bays on Westgate. Orchard Street Car Park is the nearest public car park, a three-minute walk. Buses 48, 51, 52, 53, 71, 107, 600, 700 and U7 stop within a few minutes’ walk. Chichester railway station is a ten-minute walk south.

Between 46-48 Westgate and Westgate House (52 Westgate), ten minutes from the Cathedral. Open in Google Maps ↗

Three other West Sussex offices

Selsey

87 High Street · Selsey
01243 602832

East Wittering

The Old Bank House
01243 671782

Bognor Regis

01243 860323

FAQ · the questions clients actually ask

Questions answered in plain English.

Are you really the oldest solicitors in Chichester?+

Yes. Continuous practice from around 1730 as Rapers, in three Chichester addresses: North Pallant (1730 to roughly 1829), West Street (1829 to 2009), and 50 Westgate since. In 2001 Rapers merged with Stone Milward, the practice that Roger Stone and Martin Milward founded in the early 1990s, to form Stone Milward Rapers. SMR is the contraction of all three names. The Chichester and District Law Society lists us as the city’s oldest solicitors firm.

How much does a conveyance actually cost?+

A fixed-fee quote per matter, given before you instruct us. The number depends on the price band, freehold or leasehold, age and complexity of title, and the search pack required. We are accredited under the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) which means our fees and processes are independently audited. Search packs, AML verification, Land Registry deed copies and leasehold information fees are itemised on every quote.

How long does a typical freehold purchase take?+

On average around twelve weeks from instruction to completion on a freehold. Leasehold purchases take longer because the managing agent and freeholder both have to provide papers. Re-mortgages tend to run about two months. We do not commit to a specific completion date until we have seen the file.

Do I deal with the same person from start to finish?+

Yes. The named lead opens your file and closes it, supervised by one of the five Directors. Twenty-three lawyers and staff across four offices means your matter does not pass between unfamiliar desks. For Wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney for elderly clients we offer home visits across West Sussex; the elderly-client desk is committed to dementia-aware procedure under our Alzheimer’s Society partnership.

Where do I park if I am coming to Westgate?+

Visitor parking is available at the office. On-street parking on Westgate is one hour. The nearest public car park is Orchard Street, a three-minute walk. Multiple buses (48, 51, 52, 53, 71, 107, 600, 700, U7) stop within a few minutes’ walk, and Chichester railway station is a ten-minute walk south of the office.