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Tony Pidgley in 2007. By the age of 19 he had created a successful haulage business, after which he sold up and moved into building homes.
Tony Pidgley in 2007. By the age of 19 he had created a successful haulage business, after which he sold up and moved into building homes. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Tony Pidgley in 2007. By the age of 19 he had created a successful haulage business, after which he sold up and moved into building homes. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Tony Pidgley obituary

This article is more than 3 years old

Shrewd property developer who rose from humble origins to make his fortune with the housebuilding firm Berkeley Homes

The life of Tony Pidgley, the property developer, who has died aged 72 following a stroke, would have done a Victorian novel proud.

The child of a single mother, he spent his early years as a Barnardo’s boy, his childhood as a logger working with adoptive Traveller parents, and his teenage years amassing a fleet of lorries. Then in his 20s he founded a housebuilding company, Berkeley Homes (now Berkeley Group), one of Britain’s most successful, which brought him a 16th-century mansion in 100 acres and a fortune estimated at around £300m.

Pidgley became an icon of the industry, revered by his peers and shareholders for his ability to call the ups and downs of the notoriously fickle property market, a talent that enabled him to anticipate the 1989 housing market collapse and the 2008 financial meltdown.

In the aftermath of both, he recognised new trends and retained enough resources to take advantage. He spotted the move back to city centre living in the 1990s, invested heavily in brownfield sites in London and was one of the first to realise the potential for riverside development. In recent years he partnered local councils in the redevelopment of large London housing estates such as Kidbrooke and Woodberry Down, as well as heritage sites such as Woolwich Arsenal.

Bluntly spoken and often mischievous, he relished his successful battles to resist takeover, describing one as “a lovely experience”, and saying of his opponent, “I didn’t work all the years I have worked to let him take the company. But did I enjoy it? Yes. He is no mug”. The former Labour minister Andrew Adonis described him as “the most ruthless and most talented property developer I dealt with in government”.

Born in Surrey, he spent his early years in a Barnardo’s home, then at the age of four was adopted by Bill and Florence Pidgley, who were Travellers based near Kingston upon Thames. They made an income by selling logs, and for a while lived in a disused railway carriage. “Did I think I had a bad upbringing?” he once asked rhetorically. “No. I never knew anything different. All I know is I had my chores. I loved them. We cut trees down, we cut them up into logs, we sold logs, we loaded them, we knew how many bags on a lorry, we knew what it cost us. What better fun could you have?”

By the time he left school at 15 he was driving lorries, and after a spell as a landscape gardener to save enough to buy his own truck he started a haulage business. It had 42 vehicles when, aged 19, he sold it to a housebuilder, Crest Nicholson, and as part of the deal began to work for Crest’s housing division. Sacked from Crest in 1976, he set up Berkeley Homes with a colleague, Jim Farrer.

The company started modestly, building “executive homes” on small sites in the home counties. Eight years later it was still building fewer than 100 homes a year, but nonetheless was floated on the now defunct Unlisted Securities Market. It was soon building more than 600 houses a year, and when Pidgley spotted the coming housing market crash in 1989 he initiated an early and aggressive selling programme.

With the cash generated by those sales he was able, after the crash, to start buying up large development sites at distressed prices in London and other major cities. Berkeley has since concentrated on larger scale development in London, while in rural areas it has focused on village-sized developments with their own community facilities. In 2015 it was named large developer of the year.

Pidgley was increasingly seen as an industry guru by colleagues and politicians, and in 2010 was named “most influential person in the London housing market”. A long serving president of the London Chamber of Commerce, he was appointed CBE in 2013 for services to the housing sector and the community. He served on advisory bodies including Michael Heseltine’s Estates Regeneration Advisory Panel, the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission and the London mayor’s Outer London Commission.

He could be domineering at shareholder meetings, and a personal assistant once described how he could get “heated”. But he retained the common touch which saw him take his drivers out for a meal every Friday night when he ran his haulage business, and he was never so happy as visiting workers on site. Forthright about the London housing crisis, he said: “We can’t have the situation where policemen, fire engine drivers or nurses don’t have a home that’s affordable.” His solution was that 30% of major new development should feature a mixture of affordable rents, shared-ownership units and care home facilities, although he insisted that was the government’s call.

Pidgley built up a fortune which the Sunday Times Rich List estimated at £295m, and was proud of what he had achieved from unpromising beginnings. “I am basically uneducated,” he said in 2015. “Ask me to spell 10 words, I will probably spell three. I don’t feel ashamed of that. Am I streetwise? Yes. Is it fantastic what I have done? Yes. Do I love it still? Yes. Will I retire? No.”

He had two children, Tony and Tania, from his 1966 marriage to Ruby, which ended in a bitter divorce in 1999. Four years later he also fell out with Tony, after Tony had planned an abortive takeover bid for his father’s business – although relations between the two later improved.

In 2001 he married Sarah Hill, a dressage rider, whom he had met at a polo match. Subsequently he invested heavily in horse breeding in Germany, with some of the horses kept at his Windsor farm. They had two children, Annabella and Jessica.

He is survived by Sarah and by his children.

Anthony William Pidgley, businessman, born 6 August 1947; died 26 June 2020

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