History

With a pedigree of more than 45 years of entrepreneurial excellence, Wyboston Lakes Ltd. is recognised as a world class business providing fully serviced open market conference and training centres, serviced offices, golf and leisure facilities. It is the core of the family business with a history adorned with landmarks and innovative concepts.

It began in the early 1960s when current president Peter Hutchinson started a small family business, Potton Timber Engineering Ltd., manufacturing wooden pallets and cases in an old foundry building in the village of Potton, Bedfordshire. The business grew rapidly developing sophisticated packaging for multinational blue chip companies like Ford, Rank Xerox and Kodak.

In the 1970s, the growing demand for housing inspired Peter’s entrepreneurial flair and the company persified into manufacturing timber frame housing components. Winning major public and private sector contracts, Potton rapidly became one of the major suppliers of timber frames to the construction and housing development industries in the UK and overseas, and established the benchmark for timber frame housing by becoming the first manufacturer to be registered by the British Standards Institute. During this period, Potton built thousands of houses for leading developers including Laing Homes, Barratt, Bellway, Lovell, Crest Nicholson, McInerny, McCann and David Wilson.

Although the recession in the late 1970s hit many construction companies, it stimulated further innovation by Potton with the development of pre-finished modular or ‘volumetric’ construction. Houses were manufactured and finished in ‘pod’ form in the factory and bolted together on site. This dramatically reduced erection times and resulted in further success for Potton. The volumetric principal was also applied to hotels, and the construction of a hotel in just 14 weeks so astounded Sir Rocco Forte, that Potton was awarded the contract with Trust House Forte to manufacture and build 200 Travel Lodges around the United Kingdom. Many other hotel chains were supplied including Swallow Hotels, Whitbread Premier Inns and Holiday Inns Express.

In the 1980s Peter introduced the US ‘self-build’ concept into the UK. The innovative ‘Heritage’, an authentic Tudor-style house designed for the self-build market was launched at the 1982 Ideal Home Exhibition to great acclaim. Manufactured in the factory for easy assembly, the ‘kit’ included classic exposed beams and inglenook fireplaces and set the benchmark for self-build properties, establishing Potton as the market leader in self-build package homes.

As part of Potton’s strategic development plan, Peter formed a sister company, Potton Developments Ltd to invest in land banks, and in 1983 Potton Developments Ltd purchased 350 acres at Wyboston Lakes. Although it only consisted of an infant golf course and flooded gravel pits, it was Peter’s foresight that recognised that Wyboston’s delightful rural setting at a strategic location would be a sound foundation for persifying the group activities into the residential training and leisure marketplace. To ensure success and gain competitive advantage he wisely used the Potton manufacturing and construction skills and experience to construct all of the buildings.

In the early 1980s Potton Developments Ltd purchased the ex-naval training centre at Shotley Point in Suffolk. This was converted into a 200 bedroom residential training centre and then fully managed and operated as a regional police probationary training centre under contract to the Home Office. After several years of operation and the successful training of thousands of police constables, the centre was sold for housing development.

The valuable experience gained at Shotley was then used to successfully start the residential training and conference centre business at Wyboston Lakes.