Before that she worked in the Scientific Department at the National Gallery. She has written and lectured extensively on preventive conservation in museums and historic houses and some of this work is recorded in the National Trust Manual of Housekeeping.

Sarah is a Trustee of English Heritage, the Landmark Trust, the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Pilgrim Trust and is President of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC). She is also a member of the Westminster Abbey Fabric Commission and the Gloucester Diocesan Advisory Committee.

Sarah is particularly interested in the sustainability of museums and heritage organisations and has worked with many museums and historic properties to help them adopt a triple bottom line approach to their financial and environmental practices and the public benefit that they provide. Her working life has taken Sarah to all parts of the South West, and she enjoys thinking about heritage in the round recognising the relationships between the natural and built heritage, and local and global environments.