George Wimpey

Early years

The business was founded by George Wimpey and Walter Tomes as a stone working partnership in 1880 in Hammersmith. The company built the first 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.

The Mitchell Era

During 1913, George Wimpey died at the age of 58; his family put the business up for sale six years later. Godfrey Mitchell, who had served in the Royal Engineers during the First World War, purchased the firm and decided to retain the Wimpey name. Mitchell would serve as George Wimpey's executive chairman for over 50 years and prove to be decisive in the company's fortunes during this time.

In the interwar period, Mitchell built up a fleet of steamrollers and took contracts for both public and private paving jobs, a considerable proportion of this work coming from new housing estates. Mitchell observed that the company could make more money as a developer than just as a contractor; having first tested this with his own money, Mitchell initiated the company's first residential development, the Greenford Park Estate, during 1928. By 1930, Wimpey was building around five hundred houses per year, rising to a peak of 1,370 during 1934.

However, the company's private housebuilding activities were abruptly ceased at the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, throughout which Wimpey concentrated on defence-related undertakings. Accordingly, it built 93 facilities, ranging from aerodromes and factories to army camps. By the end of the conflict, it had become 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 houses per year on behalf of various local authorities. Wimpey was pre-eminent in the use of no-fines concrete construction (concrete made without sand) in both high and low rise housing; this technique was particularly valuable amid a shortage of bricks and several other standard building materials. 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.

Although Wimpey experienced rising profits in the 1970s, which was largely attributed to its Middle East contracting, the group was beginning to lose direction. While Godfrey Mitchell retired as Chairman in 1973, he remained a director and a dominant figure in the company's operations until his eventual retirement from the Board in 1981 following his 90th birthday. Operational control was diffused between four joint managing directors, and the regions rather than the centre were the dominant force. Unlike some of the newer housebuilders, Wimpey's housing was mixed in operationally with its construction business. Volumes declined and, by the end of the 1980s, private housing sales were down to around 5,000 houses per year.

Acquisitions and Merger

The 1990s was a difficult period for the business, particularly in light of the economic consequences of the early 1990s recession; both the housebuilding and civil engineering sectors were hit heavily, leading to a loss of £112 million being recorded in 1992, although profitability did quickly recover. A reorganisation of Wimpey's structure, centred around key business areas, rather than geographic regions, was conducted. Furthermore, a few non-core businesses, such as its waste management activities, were divested while various properties held by the firm were written down or sold, decreasing the size of the group somewhat.

Despite the company's initial attempts to change this trend, private housing had remained contractor dominated by this time. A major turning point came in November 1995 when the Board announced a radical solution: Wimpey was to transfer its construction and minerals divisions to Tarmac in return for the latter's housing division (largely McLean Homes). Thereafter, Wimpey was once again selling 12,000 private houses per year.

Clifford Chetwood was appointed to head Wimpey in 1982. The company then had over 40,000 employees and annual revenue of £1 billion, divided between a large number of British subsidiaries. Over the next ten years, Chetwood set out to convert these into three principle divisions, Homes, Construction, and Minerals, the aim being to create divisional autonomy and responsibility.

United Kingdom housebuilding

George Wimpey homes in the United Kingdom were sold under three distinct brands: the core 'George Wimpey' brand, the 'Laing Homes' brand, which had previously been used solely in the South East and Midlands, and the affordable 'G2' brand launched in 2006. In the 1970s, George Wimpey became the United Kingdom's largest private house builder, selling 106,440 homes in the decade, and in the 1980s, George Wimpey began to reinforce Wimpey Homes as a brand, focusing on quality compact housing. Advertising, featuring the famous Wimpey cat, ensured Wimpey Homes became a household name in house building.

By 2002, there were four brands: Wimpey Homes, McLean Homes, McAlpine Homes and Laing Homes. Under the leadership of the current chief executive, Peter Redfern, (who was then head of housing), the operations were merged, and ‘Wimpey Homes’, ‘McLean Homes’ and ‘McAlpine Homes’ were replaced with ‘George Wimpey’ under a new three-dimensional purple and orange squares corporate identity. Laing Homes was retained due to its more upmarket status and its greater brand recognition. This brand disappeared in June 2008, as a result of the merger with Taylor Woodrow.

During 2006, George Wimpey launched an affordable 'G2' brand, focussing on one and two bedroom luxury apartments. Its prime target markets were value-conscious first time buyers and key workers.