Arnold Laver
British timber merchant
Arnold Laver was a British timber merchant based in Sheffield, United Kingdom. At its height, the company was one of the largest timber merchants trading in the UK, operating 15 timber depots across the UK and employed almost 700 people.
History
The business was founded in 1920 by Arnold Laver, a veteran of the First World War. Together with his brother James (known as Jim) and using a hand cart, Laver's initial business model involved customers paying in advance for the wood, which was then purchased and delivered to their premises. In its first year, Laver made enough money to buy a horse, named Charlie, to help with the deliveries. In 1925, Arnold Laver began negotiations to purchase a much larger site on Bramall Lane; two years later, the new Olympic Sawmills opened. This site became the company's head office in later years, with the main depot moving to the old goods-yard off Queens road as the firm expanded.
The saw mill on Bramall Lane/Shoreham Street has been redeveloped as Arnold Laver's new head office and Anchor Point, a residential complex, which has been built above the offices on the site of the old offices and saw mill. The site is next door to Sheffield United's ground and their hotel development, the company being the club's primary sponsor from 1985 until 1995. The company also redeveloped its site on Queens Road in 2002 and it is now occupied by a B&Q superstore.
“Arnold Laver” enters the record as british timber merchant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Arnold, Laver and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arnold Laver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.