• Home
• About
  • History of Grant Saw
  • What we do
  • The team
  • Our business associates
  • Work with us
• News
  • Legal update
  • The Greenwich Peninsula
• Our clients
• Other services
  • Immigration
  • Commissioning of Oaths
• Contact us
  • Contacts
  • Find us

Our records show that Samuel Saw was born in Woolwich in 1830. He qualified in January 1851 as an Attorney of the Courts of Queens Bench, Common Pleas and Exchequer, having been articled to Frederick Pearce, Solicitor of Woolwich. Both Greenwich and Woolwich were in the County of Kent at that time. Samuel Saw obtained his first practising certificate in November 1851 whilst a very young man and started practising as “an Attorney and Solicitor” from his home at 2 Bexley Place, Greenwich (now part of Greenwich High Road, SE10 - near where our offices are to be found today).

In those days it was usual for solicitors to act also as Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages. In the following year, Samuel Saw, then still a very young man, was appointed as Superintendent Registrar for the Parish of Woolwich in 1852. This was before the days when Registrars were full-time civil servants as they are now.

Samuel Saw continued in practice in Greenwich. He married and had at least eight children. Two of Samuel’s sons, Samuel Saw (Junior) (1856 – 1941) and Henry Saw (1865 – 1948) joined Samuel Saw in the practice which ultimately became known as Saw and Sons. Henry Saw set up a branch office of the practice in part of London that we now know as Victoria and ultimately his practice hived off from the main firm which remained in Greenwich but continued to be known as Saw and Sons. The two Samuels ran the practice. Samuel Senior retired in 1912 at the age of 82, after over 60 years of practice. He died in 1920 and Samuel Junior died in 1941.

In 1900 the practice had moved to premises at 181-183 Trafalgar Road, Greenwich after being located in Maze Hill, Greenwich for a little while. The London & County Bank (much later the Westminster and ultimately National Westminster Bank) built a new brick bank building on the corner of Trafalgar Road and Whitworth Street, East Greenwich. The ground floor was occupied by the Bank itself but the upper floors were leased to Saw and Sons who were appointed branch solicitors to the Bank. The firm remained in occupation of the upper two floors of that very same building in Trafalgar Road until moving to its present offices in Norman Road, Greenwich in 2003. The Bank closed in 1995 and the ground floor is now occupied by Corals the bookmakers.

After Samuel Saw Junior retired, Henry Robins, who had been working at the firm took over the practice which continued under the name of Saw and Sons. Henry Robins died in 1949 and for a short period the firm was run by Norman Fedrick, a solicitor of Woolwich, as the branch office of his main practice. A young solicitor called Geoffrey Grant joined the practice in 1956 and eventually took over the practice adding the name “Grant” to the firm’s name in the 1960s. Geoffrey Grant continued as Senior Partner until 1998 by which time the firm was known as Grant Saw & Sons. Although having retired, Geoffrey Grant still remains on the firm’s notepaper as a Consultant having been a solicitor for over 50 years. The firm shortened its name to Grant Saw in 2003.

There are now five partners in the practice. The practice expanded when it merged with a long-established practice in Blackheath called Hudgell Yeates & Co in 2005. Hudgell Yeates had been founded by a solicitor called Maurice Hudgell in the late 1930s. The firm remained at offices in Charlton Road (originally 1 Charlton Road) Blackheath Standard but latterly 2 Charlton Road, until these offices closed in 2006. Richard (Dick) Geddes and Andrew Blackburn and some of the former staff of Hudgell Yeates now work at the offices of Grant Saw in Greenwich where currently there are 25 lawyers in the practice together with a similar number of support staff. In 2007 the firm achieved the Law Society’s Lexcel Quality Standard accreditation.