Where it all started

If Harry Wellings had not Knocked a cold store door off its hinges with a heavy trolley loaded with margarine, Bromborough Paints would never have existed. Harry’s carelessness on his first job after leaving school got him the sack and he talked himself into a job on a building site.

In 2009 his Wirral-based Bromborough Paints celebrated its 61st anniversary.

Harry Wellings said: “I put a great deal of the success of my life down to lady luck. If I hadn’t hit that door I would probably have been working in the margarine factory for the rest of my life”.

 The organisation’s core business is wholesaling to the retail trade, as well as operating as a decorators’ merchant. These are areas in which we have set high standards of service with a competitive pricing policy in markets which have become increasingly volatile in recent years.

Bromborough Paints  is a family run independent Company and Managing Director Neville Wellings, son of the founder says: “I firmly believe the strength of our Company is in its diversified nature, and in concentrating its energies toward top quality service at the best prices.”

Harry Wellings grew up in Port Sunlight and on leaving school he joined the margarine factory, Planters - later Stork margarine. His first job was working on the production line making wooden cases for packaging. He then moved into the blending room where one of his duties was to push heavy trolleys loaded with freshly produced margarine into the cold store. But one afternoon Harry lost control of his trolley and knocked the cold store door off its hinges - and that is where his job for life ended abruptly at the age of 16.

But Harry has always been resourceful and he did what he described as “Doing a Tebbit”. He got on his bike and cycled over to a nearby housing development where he secured a job as a joiner and served his time as an apprentice. His career in the building trade had begun.

In 1929 he moved onto another housing development, only a mile away from where Bromborough Paints is located today. More housing developments followed and he met Grace, the wife to whom he was to be happily married for nearly 60 years. He described this as “another of my lucky spots”.

As a builder Harry was in a reserve occupation when war broke out in 1939 but he was sent to the local Hooton airfield where he used his joinery skills to repair the wooden framed Avro Anson planes. Then he was sent to Birkenhead repairing homes after the air raids. It was there that he met Bill McDermott and Alf Norman.

Together they formed NMW - Norman, McDermott and Wellings. It was Harry’s first venture into business and the company was kept busy working on war damaged property. Eventually, Harry Wellings did get called up and was put in the RASC as a vehicle fitter. He went to France soon after the D-Day landings and got involved in the Battle of the Bulge.

Although he was in the army Harry was looking ahead and when his army unit returned home to Liverpool he managed to enrol at night school - and also purchased a plot of land in Greenfields Avenue, just down the road from where Bromborough Paints stands today.

The plot was large enough to accommodate eight houses and while still in the army unit he spent his evenings drawing up the plans. He got building approval, negotiated early release, and in 1946 he was back with Bill McDermott.

The Greenfield Avenue development was under way and other contracts followed. However, Bill McDermott had always had an ambition to run a shop and at 38 Village Road, Bromborough, a small house and plot of land had been put on the market by Hodgson, a local grocer.

They acquired the property and that was the start of Bromborough Paint & Building Supplies which opened its doors on 5th January 1948. On the same day Harry Wellings moved into his own house, which he had just built himself.

“On the first day we took four pence and put sixpence in the meter” Harry recalls.

Legend has it that the income came from the sale of a few sheets of glass paper.

Slowly the business grew. Bromborough Paint & Building Supplies started selling mortar, sand and lime. They acquired their own mortar mills and lime pits in Eastham.

Harry’s son Neville, now Managing Director, joined the company in 1969.