Pennine Flooring Supplies, Company

Pennine Flooring Supplies was started in 1976 by Doctor Tony Gladstone, a chemist working in the laboratories of Turner & Newall in Rochdale. Whilst re-decorating his house Tony became frustrated at the lack of availability of cork floor and wall tiles for his bathroom. Cork was becoming increasing popular and when Tony finally tracked down a source of supply, he decided to leave behind his mundane lab work and set up Northern Cork Supplies in Rochdale. Northern Cork created their own retail outlet at their stores on Rooley Moor Road, offering all forms of cork - rolls, sheets, wall and floor tiles, by mail order throughout the country and supplying direct to the floor contracting trade and retail shops. Tony was soon joined by two other ex Turner & Newall employees, Graham Redman and Peggy Yates, and later by a former Wicanders representative. In 1986 Northern Cork expanded by opening a depot in the heart of the Lake District in Kendal. After a split with his business partner, Tony changed the company's name to Pennine Flooring Supplies to reflect the Carlisle Depot greater variety of products the company was now offering, as cork was View from Carlisle Depot becoming less fashionable. Around this time Tony and his fellow director Graham Redman were joined by John Pendleton, who had an excellent knowledge of Hardwood flooring following his eight years with Atkinson & Kirby. Expansion continued unabated as Pennine were able to offer an increasing range of Commercial and Domestic floorcoverings to a wider range of customers. Bigger, newer premises were bought in Heywood in 1990, our head office and main warehousing facility, shortly followed by a depot in Carlisle that took over the business from the Kendal address. Chester Depot Tony retired in 1999 to pursue his love of mountain climbing, Unit 306 but the expansion has continued rapidly under the ownership of John and Graham. The next major step for the company came in July 2004 with the purchase of Panhurst Ltd, a small, family run distributor based in Bretton, on the western outskirts of Chester. This gave Pennine Flooring a much greater penetration into the flooring markets in Cheshire, Wirral and North Wales. Just three months later in September 2004 came the setting up of the dedicated laminate and hardwood flooring division at Unit 306 Phoenix Close in Heywood. Julia Barrow and Peter Fell joined from a rival laminate flooring distributor to run this side of the business and we now boast one of the biggest stock holdings of Quick-Step laminate flooring in the north. Over the Christmas shut down in 2004 the company moved its Carlisle operation from the town centre to the rapidly expanding Kingmoor Park Estate on the northern outskirts of the city. Bigger, cleaner warehousing space together with instant access to the M6 at junction 44 has made trading for both our staff and customers a much more pleasant and efficient experience.