Monday Interview: History meets entrepreneurship in former accountant

A MAN of many talents, Chris Legard runs a holiday park, a menswear retailer business and also a country house, which has been in his family for generations – a strange mixture of heritage and new age entrepreneurialism.

He has just won the next High Sheriff of North Yorkshire spot, devolved from the High Sheriff of Yorkshire position which is the oldest secular title under the Crown.

The title has been around since the Norman conquest. Mr Legard said: “It’s a funny old thing, with no powers in it, when it used to be the most powerful position in the country.”

The nearly 1,000 year-old position may be largely ceremonial (and paid for out of the candidates’ own pocket) but Mr Legard said it was worth it – you get a uniform and a sword, though the velvet plus fours and breeches seemed to be less appealing.

Mr Legard is also a businessman in his own right, owning Thirsk-based men’s clothing company Joseph Turner as well as a holiday park lodge on his family-owned estate Scampston Hall, which features landscaping from Capability Brown.

“I live two lives at the moment, my two commercial lives are quite separate. I’m incredibly lucky that I have two fantastic teams on both businesses. They are used to not seeing me for a week!”

Mr Legard started training as a chartered accountant at PwC in Hull before moving to Leeds, London, Boston in the US and then back to Leeds.

Leaving PwC in 1997, he brought some business experience with him. The last deal he did involved a mail order business. Mr Legard launched mail order menswear brand Joseph Turner from the outbuildings of a Thirsk farm.

“I raised a bit of finance, hired three people working in a Portakabin which had been craned into the farmyard,” he said.

Joseph Turner retails gentlemen’s wear, anything from suits and jackets formal shirts to knitwear, trousers.

Interestingly in the age of the internet, the catalogue is still “crucial” to the business, but although it is bucking the trend there, the recession proved a difficult time for the business. It had to backpedal on its expansion into ladieswear.

“We use the UK where we can, sourcing shoes and fabrics such as tweed and lambswool in the UK.”

The UK has become service-driven in the past decade, but Mr Legard says that does not mean that manufacturing in the UK is dying.

“There’s not another country in the world that can make tweed as well, but price wise, most things made in Chine years because it is cheaper. However prices are beginning to equalise and it will become a fairer playing field.

“Chinese capacity drove manufacturing partially out of UK. We’ve lost the ability to make garments. High end niche fabrics are still around but the UK needs to rediscover its pride in textiles.”

“I hope manufacturing returns to the UK, as the world economy equalises, and China and India are becoming more progressively expensive,” he said.

The teeth of the recession have bitten the industry though, with the administrations of BHS and Austin Reed. “They are very much bricks and mortar retailers, who hadn’t fully embraced the home shopping trend.

“To a degree we’ve had to keep pace with that change,” he said.

Joseph Turner may be Mr Legard’s brainchild, but Scampston Hall, which has been in the family for 300 years, is a legacy.

“I’m more of a custodian for a generation with Scrampston,” said Mr Legard. “I certainly don’t want to be the idiot that loses it! I want to leave it in the best nick I can.

“We are trying to diversify and make it a more enterprising place.”

When Mr Legard took it on, the grounds were given over to farming and cottages. Now it is a bona fide tourist attraction, with a walled garden and luxury lodge park following major investment. A venue for weddings, corporate conferences, a film set for TV and film, and a Christmas tree retailer to top it off.

“It’s unbelievably expensive keeping a place like Scrampston going to a high standard. In order to do it, you have to take a commercial approach to protect the heritage.

“There’s a soul to these privately owned properties you don’t get otherwise. Under Napoleonic law in France, estates were split between children. Now every chateau is empty and they are devoid of family history. Scrampston is a family home, with no ropes or barriers, which creates a different experience. If I can keep this property going for the public to enjoy, then it’s job done.”