Carvers appeals for lost history after fire that nearly destroyed Wolverhampton business
The boss of a builder’s merchants that lost much of its historical records in a blaze is appealing for people to search their attics for invoices, photos or other memorabilia about the company.
Carvers Wolverhampton Limited is celebrating 125 years of the family firm being in business but a lot of information and records relating to the company were destroyed in a major fire in 2012.
Now Henry Carver, the 62-year-old managing director of the company, is determined to celebrate the founding of the company by his great-grandfather, Harry Carver, in 1896.
His son, Jack, aged 27, is also following in the family’s footsteps and is currently timber sales manager.
Henry said: “We want to celebrate with a two-night party for family, suppliers and customers but this may have to be delayed to later this year. We want to do it properly and may have to delay even longer because of the pandemic and restrictions.
“However, we have a family history author, Nigel Watson, compiling a book about the history of Carvers, and we really would like people who have any information, photographs, press cuttings and even invoices to come forward.
“The fire in 2012, which many readers will remember, destroyed all the company records and everything was burned.
“It destroyed two acres of warehousing and started from a faulty new boiler. Fortunately we did have another site and managed to keep going.
"I think that we are still in business after all this time because we have an ethos of getting out of bed and working. We have all had a good work ethos.
"We are hoping people will come forward with some interesting items and really anything is appreciated as all our records were destroyed. In 1896 Harry Carver was classed as a working builder and a business, known as Carver & Co, is recorded in 1901.”
Smoke could be spotted billowing into the sky during the major fire in February 2012 with flames, which reached 20 foot, also seen for miles around as 90 firefighters were drafted in to tackle it.
The fire had started at around 11.40am at the business’ Littles Lane headquarters, with a total of 200 staff and 20 customers fleeing as the emergency services rushed to the scene.
Both Carvers and the £40 million high-rise student village Victoria Halls, which included 700 students, were evacuated along with scores of homes, Carvers Cooker Centre, Woden Primary School and the Maltings Mobility Centre.
Managing director Henry Carver fought back tears at the time after he told the staff to go home and explained to the Express & Star he had been the last to leave the building after checking everyone was out.
He said at the time: “We can take a little bit of happiness in that no one has died. We now have no records or anything. The firefighters came quickly within five minutes. We are very sad, I’m sad for everybody.”
It took only a few hours for the landmark to burn to the ground – but the owners were determined to not let that be the final chapter in the story.
And, two years later, following an investment of £5.5 million and countless hours of construction work later, the Carvers building was restored.
