Cavanna Homes celebrates 100 years of housebuilding

September 7, 2023 / Keith Osborne
Cavanna Homes celebrates 100 years of housebuilding

South West housebuilder Cavanna Homes has marked 100 years in business with a special party for staff and shareholders at its Torquay headquarters.

Founded in 1923 by Philip ‘PD’ Cavanna and his brother Ray, the business has never lost sight of its strong Torbay presence and continues to concentrate on building homes in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset.

Its expansion of the business over the past 100 years – making it now one of the region’s largest independent housebuilders – has seen it appoint non-family members in senior roles.

However, Jeremy Cavanna, the grandson of co-founder PD Cavanna, remains as a non-executive director, after handing over the chairmanship of the business this year to Keith Miller, formerly group managing director and then deputy chairman. Grayham Tucker was appointed to the role of group managing director in January 2023 to oversee the day-to-day operation of the company.

Miller told guests at the celebration event: “There have been huge changes in the housebuilding industry over the past century and Cavanna Homes has moved with the times. But the business has always stuck to the principles of its family founders – delivering excellent homes safely and to the highest standard for our customers.”

When the company was founded, Britain was still emerging from the economic difficulties caused by the aftermath of the First World War. In 1923 the Cavanna brothers set out from their home in Watford to seek work as plasterers in Torquay.  They had been advised by their parents, who had been in service on the English Riviera, to head West.

The thinking was that because Torquay homes were often finished with render there would be plenty of work for qualified plasterers and the brothers soon branched out into housebuilding.

In 1924 sufficient progress had been made for PD and Ray’s families to join them in the homes they had built in Laura Grove, Paignton. Not long after, the partnership dissolved and PD moved into general contracting and housebuilding, while Ray continued the plastering business.

As the need for new housing increased, especially following the Second World War, Cavanna Homes began to grow into Torbay’s foremost building company and in 1949 the company was incorporated. The business grew through the 1960s and 1970s, selling in excess of 100 homes a year for the first time.

PD Cavanna was involved in the business with his sons and son-in-law at the helm, right up until his death in 1983 at the age of 93.

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