Dr Christopher Coggins

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Education

My interest in wood preservation began in Portsmouth in 1966 when I was accepted onto the External London botany course. It was at Portsmouth that I was inspired by the work of Dr E B Gareth Jones on marine fungi. I also came into contact with IRG member Rod Eaton who worked under Gareth Jones at Portsmouth. After taking my botany degree, I was recruited to work at the Paint Research Association (PRA) in Teddington, London on fouling algae that grow on the hulls of ships and affect their fuel economy as well as wood decay fungi. After a year at PRA, I applied for and, having been interviewed by Dr David Dickinson (Rentokil’s mycologist) and Professor Jennings in the Department of Botany, was offered a PhD studentship at Liverpool University, part funded by Rentokil Ltd to look at the way Serpula lacrymans (the dry rot fungus) grows in buildings. Rentokil’s interest in Serpula was its commercial work in correcting dry rot outbreaks in buildings in the UK and I was able to show that commercial dry rot treatments, based on removal of moisture and decayed wood, could be made more profitable by avoiding the hitherto more drastic work that reflected commercial understanding of what was needed to control dry rot outbreaks.

Mycology

On finishing my three years at Liverpool and looking for work, I found myself in competition with David Dickinson for a lectureship post at Imperial College under Professor John Levy. During my interview, John Levy told me one of my botany exam answers had been referred to him as I had described in detail how soft rot affected wood in water and in the ground when the examiner was looking for a description of a different fungus causing soft rot affecting growing green shoots. My soft rot description came from Gareth Jones’ work and groundbreaking work on decay of wet wood by John Savory of the Forest Products Research Laboratory (later BRE) and John Levy himself. John Savory was the examiner for my PhD thesis, Some aspects of the growth of Serpula lacrymans. I was glad under the circumstances to know that my degree grade was protected because I knew how to describe a new form of decay based on work at FPRL and Imperial College. In the event, David Dickinson was offered the job at Imperial College, and I was offered David’s old job at Rentokil.

IRG

As Rentokil’s mycologist I then had an opportunity to join IRG which I did ahead of the IRG 8 meeting in 1976 in Wildhaus, Switzerland. I drove to Wildhaus with David Dickinson, Rod Eaton and John Levy and that was my introduction to IRG. I subsequently was able to attend IRG meetings in Peebles (IRG 10), Raleigh, North Carolina USA (IRG 11), Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) (IRG 12), Avignon, France (IRG 17), Lappeenranta, Finland (IRG 20), Kyoto, Japan (IRG 22), Harrogate, England (IRG 23), Maastricht, The Netherlands (IRG 29) and Cardiff, Wales (IRG 33). I also worked with Gerald Ozanne on the organisation of IRG meetings in the springs of 1990 to 2005 in Cannes, France focussed on environmental issues affecting wood preservation. I am now a Life-long IRG member.

I have felt that it might make presentations to IRG meetings more valuable to have some from each meeting peer-reviewed and published separately but I have not been able to attend main IRG meetings after 2002 owing to cost restraints and have not been able to make my views known.

Career

My career in Rentokil took a rather different turn from my original involvement in dry rot work when I had the opportunity to join the company’s Wood Preserving Division (WPD) as Technical Manager. WPD’s business was making and selling water-base wood preservatives based principally on copper with chromium and arsenic compounds.

BWPDA and WPA

I left Rentokil to become Director of the British Wood Preserving and Damp-proofing Association (BWPDA) in 1993. During my time at BWPDA I had to focus on commercial issues affecting BWPDA members and it became clear that the interests of remedial treatment members (wet-rot and dry-rot and damp-proofing companies) differed from those involved in supply of industrial wood preservatives and I helped to change BWPDA into two separate divisions – Property Care and Wood Protection - that eventually became two separate associations that remain in business to this day. I became Director of the Wood Protection Association in 2006 based in Derby, England and the Property Care Association set up separately in Huntingdon, England. Eventually I became technical advisor to WPA until my retirement at the end of 2024.

This bio was written for the January 2025 IRG Newsletter.