Bernard Sunley
Born4 November 1910
Catford, London, England
Died20 November 1964(1964-11-20) (aged 54)
Hampstead, London, England
OccupationProperty developer
Known forFounder, Bernard Sunley & Sons
Children3
RelativesRichard Tice (grandson)
Bernard Sunley 1910-1964 Contractor and philanthropist lived and worked here 1941-1958 - green plaque erected by City of Westminster at 24 Berkeley Square London W1J 6EJ

Bernard Sunley (4 November 1910 – 20 November 1964) was a British property developer, and the founder of Bernard Sunley & Sons.

Born at Catford in south-east London, he was the son of John Sunley, a florist and fruiterer, and was educated at St Ann's School in Hanwell.[1] After leaving school at the age of fourteen, he hired a horse and cart to move earth, and then went into the landscape gardening business.[2] One of his first major contracts was re-laying the pitch at Highbury for Arsenal FC.[3]

In November 1931, at Holy Trinity Church, Southall, Sunley married Mary Goddard, a daughter of William Goddard, a farmer, of Waxlow Farm, Southall.[4] They had two daughters and a son.

From earth-moving, Sunley moved into the open-cast mining business. In 1940, he founded Bernard Sunley & Sons.[5] During the Second World War he built over 100 airfields, and in 1942 he purchased the business of Blackwood Hodge, then a supplier of agricultural machinery and later a successful plant hire and sale business.[6] He subsequently "ranked alongside the most successful property developers of the 1950s property boom".[5]

Sunley campaigned as a Conservative Party candidate for Ealing West in 1945, but was unsuccessful.

Sunley established the Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation in 1960 with a pledge of £300,000 worth of shares. As of 2011, it had made grants of more than £92 million.[3]

He died in 1964. His son, John Sunley (died 2011) was a property developer and philanthropist.[3] His grandson is Richard Tice, a businessman and leader of Reform UK.

Bernard Sunley Hall, named after him, is a hall of residence for Imperial College London students at 40–44 Evelyn Gardens Square.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ ‘SUNLEY, Bernard’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016
  2. ^ "Bernard Sunley, builder, is dead". The New York Times. 22 November 1964. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  3. ^ a b c John Sunley , The Daily Telegraph, 22 March 2011
  4. ^ Marriages solemnized at the parish church of Holy Trinity Southall in the County of Middlesex, No. 138, November 18, 1931 ancestry.co.uk, accessed 22 November 2022 (subscription required)
  5. ^ a b "Sunley, Bernard (1910–1964)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50212. Retrieved 25 July 2015. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ "Blackwood Hodge Memories". Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  7. ^ "Evelyn Gardens". Imperial College London. Archived from the original on 19 April 2016. Retrieved 3 May 2016.


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