Stanley Clarke

Stanley William Clarke was born in Woods Lane, Stapenhill, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, on 7 June 1933. His father, Victor, was previously a brewery worker, disabled by tuberculosis; while his mother, Mabel, was a maid at Dunstall Hall. To help his family financially, nine year old Clarke undertook a daily paper round before school, delivered prescription medication in the evenings, and on weekends, delivered meat for the local butcher. Clarke was thinking of leaving school to become a farmer's hand, but his father persuaded him to stay on at Burton Technical High School. Clarke's father died when Clarke was aged 11.

Aged 15, he became an apprentice plumber. Upon graduating, he started his own business. Working from a bicycle with a front carrier for his tools, he aimed to provide a better service, at a better price, than anyone else.

Aged 21, he agreed a deal with a local farmer to buy one acre of land. The farmer agreed to waive the purchase price of £125 until Clarke had gained planning permission, which he duly did and sold the land ownwards for £650 before paying for it.

St Modwen Properties

In 1966, Clarke and his brother-in-law Jim Leavesley set up the building firm Clarke Quality Homes, which he developed into a major regional house builder. Building more than 500 houses a year, it was the largest privately owned house-building and development company in the country. Clarke believed that quality was a prime requirement of any business or private enterprise, a notion which gained Clarke Homes six National House Building Council awards on different sites around the country in a single year.

In 1987, shortly before the property crash, they sold the house building side of the business to BICC subsidiary Balfour Beatty for £51 million, a company which at the time only had net assets of £6 million, and in which Clarke and his wife owned 80% of the company. Always ready to reward his staff for work well done, on completion of the sale he shared £12 million among all of the company's employees.

Renaming the residual business St Modwen, in 1986 the management reversed the business into Redman Heenan International plc, a listed former engineering concern that had become a shell company. At that time the name was changed to St. Modwen Properties plc. In the 1980s the company developed the 1986 Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival site, Burton's Octagon Shopping Centre, the Britannia Stadium, and the Concorde Business Park near Manchester Airport.

The property crash of the early 1990s, brought a confrontation with NatWest bank:

Everyone was running scared, and the banks got after us. They said we've got to close offices, got to do a rights issue... I was so cross, I stood up to my full height... and I took my fist.. and I banged it down on the table. That's when we started the policy of using the rent roll to cover all dividends. They could never understand what we were doing, those City boys.

After this time the company began to concentrate on the development of brownfield sites as shopping centres, office buildings and industrial estates.

Before Clarke's death, St Modwen had acquired the 228-acre former MG Rover factory at Longbridge for £42.5 million, and 600 acres of disused land from Corus at Llanwern steelworks for £17.5 million. The company was named the best real-estate performer in Europe for 2002, and has a current stock market valuation of £400 million; Clarke's personal stake in the company was estimated to be worth £80 million.

Clarke married Hilda Leavesley in 1957, on his birthday. The couple had three daughters (Sally, Mary and Jane) and one son, Simon.

Dunstall Hall

In 1997 the couple bought Dunstall Hall for £4.5 million, a house set in 1,260 acres (510 ha) of land adjoining their existing estate at Barton-under-Needwood. Clarke had three personal connections to the house: the last owner was Sir Robert Douglas, who had given Clarke his first substantial plumbing job; the Hall was where his mother had worked in service; Clarke had poached game there as a boy.

Investing in the restoration of the Hall and grounds, which feature in a dedicated programme on Channel Five, the plan was to sustain its upkeep by turning it ito a conference, banqueting and wedding venue. The family also used it for entertaining, where Clarke would put on charity and celebratory events, engaging artistes including Acker Bilk, Ken Dodd, Ronnie Corbett and Paul Daniels. On one occasion, the band of the Staffordshire Regiment marched down the garden beating the retreat.

Clarke was a notable philanthropist, both donating and raisining sums for various charitable causes.

Appointed chairman of the Lichfield Cathedral Trust in 1994, Clarke agreed to head an appeal to raise £2 million for repairs to the cathedral fabric. He then took on a second project to raise £4 million to make Lichfield Cathedral a centre of musical excellence, which included the restoration of the cathedral's 1884 William Hill church organ. At the time of his death, Clarke was chairing an appeal to raise £2.5 million to restore the 16th-century Flemish Herkenrode glass in seven of Lichfield Cathedral's windows.

In 18 months, Clarke raised £2 million for the Racing Welfare Charities. He then joined an £8 million chaired by the Princess Royal, for a new headquarters for the Animal Health Trust. Clarke also gave a large personal donation to a fund to rescue Burton Albion F.C. when it was facing financial ruin.

With his wife, Clarke was also contributed to medical and religious organisations. Although that to the Queen's Hospital Cancer Appeal is known, the majority of their donations, running into millions of pounds, were always made on the understanding that they should remain anonymous.