A little more company history
William Thomas Mead was born on 22nd April 1895 in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, the son of Amos Mead, a dye works labourer and Matilda Mead (neč Philpot). He saw action during World War I and was invalided out of the army before the end of the war due to exposure to Mustard Gas. In 1919, he started a career in the building industry, later going into partnership to form Mead & Poulton, building houses in the Luton and Dunstable area. With his first wife, he had three children, Audrey, Peter and Douglas.
William Mead with his third wife, Maude
On 10th March 1934, he formed Mead Estates Limited, and carried on the business of building houses in the local area up to the start of World War II. During the war, the company was heavily involved in helping to repair bomb damage in London and the local area.
Hand-digging foundations in
the era before the JCB
A Mead & Poulton ledger from 1920
In the building boom that followed just after the war, the company was busier than ever. When his eldest son, Peter, was de-mobbed from the Army after serving in post-war Palestine, William enlisted his help to run the company. In the years that followed, Peter took over the day-to-day management of the company, helped by his younger brother Dougal.
Peter Mead
This remained the case until the late 1980's when Peter handed the majority of the managerial tasks over to his two eldest sons, Geoffrey and Tony. In October 1990, the company was re-organised so that the interests of Peter and Dougal could be separated, with Peter and his side of the family continuing with the running of Mead Estates.
Tony left the company in 1997 to pursue his own career in a related field, leaving the management of Mead Estates to Geoffrey, Richard and Janet. Peter Mead remained actively involved with the company until his death in December 2003.
In April 2004, after operating from the same premises in Princes Street Dunstable since before World War II, the company relocated to larger premises in Ridgmont near Woburn.