Wimpey
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Housebuilding |
| Founded | 1880 |
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
|
Key people
|
John Robinson, Chairman Peter Redfern, CEO |
| Revenue | £3,147.4 million (2006) |
| £362.1 million (2006) | |
| £218.0 million (2006) | |
|
Number of employees
|
6,050 (2005) |
| Parent | Taylor Wimpey |
| Website | www.taylorwimpey.co.uk |
George Wimpey was formed in 1880 and, based in Hammersmith, operated largely as a road surfacing contractor. The business was acquired by Godfrey Mitchell in 1919, and he developed it into a construction and housebuilding firm. In July 2007, Wimpey merged with Taylor Woodrow to create Taylor Wimpey. Wimpey was first listed on the in 1934.
The business was founded by George Wimpey and Walter Tomes (the latter sold out in 1893) as a stone working partnership in 1880 in Hammersmith.
The company built Hammersmith Town Hall in 1896, and went on to lay the foundations for the first "electric tramway" in London in the late 1890s. The company also built the 140-acre (0.57 km2) White City Stadium complex which included a series of pavilions and gardens for the Franco British Exhibition of 1908 as well as an 80,000-seat Olympic stadium for the 1908 Olympic Games.
George Wimpey died in 1913 at the age of 58. His family put the business up for sale in 1919. Godfrey Way Mitchell bought the firm and decided to retain the Wimpey name. Sir Godfrey Mitchell remained George Wimpey's executive chairman until 1973.
Mitchell built up a fleet of steam rollers and took contracts for public and private paving jobs. Much of the work was for new housing estates and Mitchell observed that the company could make more money as a developer than just as a contractor; having tested this first with his own money, he initiated the company's first residential development, the Greenford Park Estate, in 1928.
By 1930, Wimpey was building around five hundred houses a year, rising to a peak of 1,370 in 1934. However, private housebuilding ceased on the outbreak of war in 1939 and Wimpey concentrated on defence work. It built 93 aerodromes, factories and army camps, and finished the war as one of the country's largest contractors.
In the immediate post war period, building controls prevented any substantial return to private housebuilding and Wimpey turned instead to the local authority market and by the early 1950s Wimpey was building 18,000 local authority houses a year. It was also expanding its building and civil engineering divisions, particularly overseas where it became one of the larger international contractors. The end of building controls in 1954 allowed Wimpey to re enter the private housing market. It did so in a substantial way through its regional structure, becoming the country's first national housebuilder; by 1972 Wimpey was building private houses at an annual rate of 12,500, some three times the rate of its nearest competitor.
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Wikipedia