Richard Costain
Epithet: Founder of the Costain building dynasty (1839-1902)
Record type: Biographies
Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):
One of Richard Costain's grandsons was Sir Albert Costain who was born in 1910 and died in 1987. Although he never fully completed a fascinating narrative entitled 'Reflections' which outlined the growth of a small family business into a conglomerate that has since the early twentieth century been one of the largest building and contracting firms in the world, it nevertheless provides us with a sufficient but brief vignette of the firm's Manx-born founder. Sir Albert Costain, known affectionately to his friends and colleagues as 'AP', was chairman of the Costain Group from 1966 to 1969, following the death of his elder brother, Richard. As a Member of the UK Parliament, AP served for several years as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Geoffrey Rippon when the latter was a member of the British government.
Sir Albert's memoirs begin with his grandfather, Richard Costain, born in 1839 at a farm in Colby. The Island was still plagued by the effects of the agricultural depression which followed the industrial revolution, and which was frequently exacerbated by failures of the potato crop. Richard decided to leave farming for apprenticeship as a builder, but on becoming qualified he found that his prospects in building or joinery were little better than those in farming. Further impetus was given to his ambition to find better things when his parents, strict Methodists like their ancestors and several of their descendants, would not allow him to marry his fiancée, Margaret Kneen, until he was well established. With Margaret's brother he left Colby for Liverpool in 1865, and together they formed a partnership in Albert Road, Waterloo, as jobbing builders and undertakers. From the beginning they did well, so much so that it was only a year before Richard was able to offer security to Margaret, and they were married with full approval.
Even at this early stage, Richard had an imaginative eye for advertising and publicity. The Costain/ Kneen partnership undertook to repair an unmade road, and as it was also unnamed, they called it Costain and Kneen Road so that they would have an address for deliveries. That is how it was recorded in the Liverpool street directory. The partnership's work increased quickly, and by 1870 the workforce number was already 30, until in 1888 they amicably agreed to go their separate ways.
Richard Costain was not only a visionary builder with imagination and integrity, he was also a fervently religious Methodist and a popular preacher. He nursed the hope that one of his sons would become an ordained minister. Richard and Margaret's family flourished, and they were blessed with eight exuberant children, five sons and three daughters. Each one did well: notable were Jim, a brilliant Oxford scholar who fulfilled his father's dream and became a Methodist minister and subsequently headmaster of Rydal Mount, a leading Methodist school; Miriam, a Sunday School teacher who held a senior financial position in the accounts department, and John who emigrated to Canada, took a job as a bricklayer's labourer, prospered and later formed a company with a partner. Sir Albert's Reflections tells us that when John returned to England he had money to invest in the Costain Liverpool family business, giving a much-needed boost to the very meagre capital then available'. The youngest daughter, Nellie, married Dr Burton, another minister, who composed several hymns.
Richard's eldest son, also Richard, after experience in the Royal Insurance office in Liverpool, joined the company where the second son, W.P., Sir Albert's father, was already in the office. By this time (circa 1888), the company was undertaking a wide range of constructions, including much of the housing at Port Sunlight, Lord Lever's 'Garden City', where the approach to house-building and workers' welfare well suited both the aspirations and the religious consciences of the Costains. The expanding firm built small churches, schools, at least one theatre, flour mills, and the shipbuilders' yards at Birkenhead. In World War I they built a large canteen for Vickers at Sheffield and housing for their munition workers. The firm even ventured as far afield as Redcar in North Yorkshire where it built extensions for Dorman Long's steelworks.
The Costains built countless housing estates in Britain, such as one for Dagenham's Ford workers, and with their burgeoning success came increasing international contracts, the Trans-Iranian railway line, built as early as the 1930s, being one example. They were pioneers in the use of pre-stressed concrete and branched out into enterprises as widespread as airports, docks and wartime defences. The group was the main contractor for both building and later demolishing the Festival of Britain Exhibition in 1951, and on the otherside of the Thames, where once stood the Palace of Whitehall with its important connections with British history, they constructed the Ministry of Defence building. The preparation for this involved the delicate engineering feat of preserving intact a medieval wine cellar whilst lowering it by 20ft and then moving it sideways!
After World War I, it was becoming more and more obvious that the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 had led to a decline in Liverpool's premier importance as a port. Having now experienced success away from Merseyside, in 1920 it was decided to embark on what the company called 'the trek south' to establish a presence in the London area; this led to their becoming civil engineers as well as builders. By this time Richard Costain senior had died but it is apparent that the amazing development of the huge international conglomerate, the Costain Group, had directly resulted from a diligent young Manxman's emigration from Colby to Liverpool.
Biography written by Henley Crowe.
(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.112-3.)
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Nationality: Manx
Gender: Male
Date of birth: 1839
Date of death: 1902