Neil Burke - Our founder and a history of NBJ
I left school back in 1975 and my goal in life was to have my own business, albeit I knew I would need a trade behind me, and I was very good with my hands in both Joinery and Metalwork.
My chosen path was Carpentry & Joinery, and I secured myself an apprenticeship with a local building company who had their own Joinery workshops, and I undertook a 3-year City & Guilds apprenticeship at Southfields College in Leicester.
In April 1982 I decided to make the break from direct employment and go it alone, working for myself with a “Man & Van” approach. Working initially from my Parents Garden shed in Husbands Bosworth, which soon became too small and inconvenient to my parents.
I recall my first project was to manufacture a private bar area for a family in Leicester and once this was complete, they asked me to do a few other jobs and from there the work just came in.
Of course, back in the early 80s I had no credit accounts with timber suppliers so everything had to be paid for as I went along. In turn, I would have to ask the client to pay me in stages or as soon as the work was completed so I could fund the next job, a £100 project seemed a big job back then!
I was then asked to do a few jobs for a lovely family at the Wharf Hotel on the Northants / Leicestershire border and whilst there I asked if I could potentially rent their large garage as a workshop space. This was agreed with a rental of £2.00 per week to the landlord who owned the property and my rent to the Draper family was to make the fires ups in winter months and take a sandwich through to Mr Draper who was a war veteran and in a wheelchair.
The Wharf workshop was alongside the Grand Union Canal at Welford where there was also a boat yard with a small joiners shop. We teamed up so each of us could use each other’s machines if we didn’t have the same piece of machinery, which was a great relationship for both parties.
I took on my first apprentice whilst based at the Wharf in 1984 as the jobs were getting larger and I was also keen to bring a younger person into the trade, which is something we are still keen to do within NBJ.
I outgrew the workshop at the Wharf and moved to some farm buildings for a short while in Husbands Bosworth and whilst larger premises, they weren’t ideal so I only rented these premises for around 18 months. In September 1988 an opportunity arose to rent workshops at the old Bitteswell Aerodrome near to Lutterworth and the whole site was being developed into one of Europe’s largest distribution sites. The size of the Warehouses were enormous, which of course needed office space, so I was soon tapping on doors looking the get works on the sites fitting out these offices, which we were successful in doing.
As the business grew with Sharon taking on the books and we started to employ more joiners so to assist us with a very busy schedule with clients such as ASDA, Toyota, George Clothing, BT amongst others. This was certainly our introduction to larger projects which could run into £100,000s.
We moved from these premises in the Summer of 1998 into our own premises in Lutterworth where we managed to secure the freehold of a workshop with nice offices.
We secured a project for a new reception area within the offices for births, deaths and marriages on Kingsway on the Aldwych which was the first project for NBJ in London which would have been in the early 1990s. I recall Sharon and I going down to London to check on the installation over the weekend period and took our son Michael with us, which was his first introduction to the business!
However, our big break into the London Market came in 1997 when we were commissioned to do a very small job on New Bond Street. A Mr John Green from the Richard Green Gallery liked the livery on our vans and asked our joiner to “get your man to call me please” and gave him his business card.
I called Mr Green and arranged to go and see him, which turned out to be a fit out of their gallery on New Bond Street, which then introduced us to the main contractor, the design team and interior designers, all of which were impressed with our work, and we still work with some of them to this day, along with the Green family.
Once our reputation grew as a reputable joinery business, the contacts became wider and we took on better, bigger and more prestigious projects including Corpus Christi college in Cambridge, which then resulted in us providing all joinery for the main sponsor of this project on his home on the Isle of Man.
Corpus Christi introduced us to Wright & Wright architects which led to us doing Oxford College libraries at Magdalen College, St John’s College (Phase II & III) Exeter College and Corpus Christi Oxford.
As things have evolved at NBJ, we have moved to our existing workshops (2009) which are based in South Leicestershire, set in 5 acres of land with 28,000 Sq/Ft workshops and offices including our design office, project management, machine shop for solid timbers, CNC department, joinery production, factory finishing along with our own in-house installation teams.
We have carried out projects as far afield as the South of France, Kuwait (3 projects) Portugal, Bulgaria, Channal Islands, and Monaco of late.
Our reputation within the Oxford College market has kept us in Oxford since 2014 with rolling projects and we are currently in negotiations for another two colleges as we have recently completed Corpus Christi’s new library.
We also have a great reputation for working on historical projects which have included the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, St Paul’s Cathedral, Barbican Concert Hall, the Grade I listed Skinners’ Hall, The Drapers’ Hall, the historical Boardroom of the Daily Mail amongst others.
We are a family run business with Sharon, our two sons Michael and Chris working alongside our other Directors of Andy Wells and Luke Sanders.
Our forward planning is to continue to be offering the best quality joinery, whether this is within high-end residential or high-end commercial sectors, including our Oxford / Cambridge college Libraries and historical projects.
The team at NBJ is what we are all about, everyone fully appreciates we have got ourselves into a very niche market with a wonderful reputation and with our combination of long serving team members and our trainees coming through, the future is very bright for the business to continue to go from strength to strength.
Never did I dream back in 1982 that we would have such a wonderful business!
Neil Burke, October 2024
