Company History
In 1970, at the age of 14, whilst doing my last year at school most of my weekends and evenings were spent in my dad’s yard sorting tiles into the right sizes, dressing them and understanding tiles as a whole. My dad started in the building industry working for a company in Tetbury before setting up on his own after the war. When I left school, before my time, I spent five years as an apprentice understanding all the aspects of building, having spent weeks on end with different trades, learning about everything from carpentry to roofing, plastering to wiring, plumbing etc, so that at the end of the five years I had a full insight into the whole of the building industry. At that time we worked on average of five pubs a year for Courage Brewery, based in Newbury and we spent a lot of time away from home roofing their properties for them and would at that time have anything up to 18 months work booked in advance.
After my apprenticeship was complete, I was put on my own with a labourer and spent the following years stripping, re-laying and repairing stone tile roofs, until I set up on my own in February 1988. I finished working with my father on the Friday and started up my own business on the Monday, for the first week I only had three days work, but things soon changed and from the following week I had enough jobs to work seven days a week, this continued for a number of years.
In July 1988 I landed my first big contract, which was to build a bungalow at Bullocks Horn in Charlton, I employed a small number of other sub-contractors to assist me with the plastering, wiring and building. By the end of this build, I had taken on 3 members of staff to help me run my business. We then progressed into all aspects of the building trade, as demand for different projects increased and with the vast building experience I had gained with my father, I felt able to cope with this. The company slowly grew over time until we were employing in the region of 30 staff; the majority of these were sub-contractors. In 1996 we purchased a property in Startley, where we set up our yard and offices and employed a secretary.
For 18 years we worked for Lord Apsley at the Bathurst Estate, along with his father Lord Bathurst, during which time we had men employed virtually full-time on the estate, re-roofing barns, the cowsheds and carrying out a lot of maintenance, decorating and refurbishments for them. This contract only ended when the estate maintenance manager retired and a new manager was employed, who brought on board contacts he had from a previous employer. We also worked for the Berkeley Estate, as well as Lord & Lady Vestry.
A sister company, Autumn Developments, was set up in 2000 to purchase land and build houses for re-sale. The first project was a cottage in Christian Malford, where we obtained permission to demolish and re-build two four-bedroom properties; these were built and sold within the first fifteen months. We then moved on to purchase a plot for three houses in Milbourne, we built three five-bedroom properties. Next we purchased land in Malmesbury to built a large three storey town house, set into the bank overlooking the River Avon, this was built to an extremely high standard with granite worktops, handmade kitchen etc. It comprised of six bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, gym with shower room, double garage, boiler room and a honeycomb of cellars in the rear. We then moved on to purchase land at Brinkworth, demolished a bungalow and built a six-bedroom property there. Due to land prices the company stood dormant for eighteen months until purchasing a property with a building plot at South Cerney, the new build is in the process of building sold, the renovated property being rented out.
During our time we have built some 10 new houses under contract for different clients, all carrying the NHBC warranty, with who we registered with in 1992.
We found the company had grown larger than we wanted it to be and found that we were losing the personal touch that we had always aimed to give and decided to reduce the size of the company so that we could again give the personal service.
Over the years we have worked on 7 churches throughout the area and 3 chapels in and around Malmesbury area and refurbished, repaired and re-roofed etc, over the time we have renovated a number of barns and turned them into houses for clients. We are listed building approved in a number of local authorities.
