Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hillier Parker May and Rowden


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:57, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Hillier Parker May and Rowden

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Contested Prod twice by User:DGG and User:K.e.coffman .Fails WP:GNG and WP:ORG .Now there company has been bought by CBRE Group. See little need for separate article the information can be included in the CBRE Group article itself. Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. North America1000 16:38, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. North America1000 16:38, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom. Four editors in total have raised issues with this article with tagging for notability, lack of references and COI in addition to the CSD and PROD. It was at one stage 8KB long now down to 0.5KB but still not notable. Sorry guys, but this just isn't the place for your "in memoriam" article.  Velella  Velella Talk 16:41, 31 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as by far nothing at all convincing and based from what's currently listed, I consider this A7. SwisterTwister   talk  17:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete -- a non-notable corporation. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. This was a company that was in existence for 102 years, and for much of that time was a significant player on the London property scene, and latterly on the national UK property scene. It was sold in 1998 for $69 million – that is not a "non-notable corporation". Inter alia, in the interwar rolling out of shopping parades throughout the UK, "Woolworth’s is known to have collaborated closely with several property developers and their agents, including Hillier, Parker, May & Rowden, Second Covent Garden Properties and Central Commercial Properties, firms which routinely employed their own staff architects to develop parades." (Kathryn Morrison and Paul Stamper, Shopping Parades (Historic England, 2016), p. 15.) Brian Raggett, Senior Director of Hillier Parker, also served as President of the Royal Town Planning Institute. In a memorandum of 1999 submitted by CB Hillier Parker [the firm in its post-1998 incarnation] to a House of Commons Select Committee, it states that the firm "advises the public and private sectors on all aspects of retail agency, investment, planning, development and research". Research reports commissioned from it are cited in reputable secondary sources, e.g. here. The article is not an orphan: it currently has 3 articles linking to it, and no doubt further links could be found/created without too much difficulty. Notability really should not be an issue. The problem is that the article has been created and worked on by enthusiasts who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia protocols and conventions, and have failed to cite their sources, resulting in its current reduction to a stub. This appears to be a classic case of biting the newcomers. They should be guided and encouraged (as, I am pleased to see, Velella has tried to do), not shot down in flames. GrindtXX (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. Further to the above, I have now had a chance to look at some of the print sources. Here are some quotes. "The two firms which built up a dominating lead over other estate agents in the multiple shop business [in the interwar years] were Hillier, Parker, May & Rowden and Healey & Baker. ... Hillier, Parker used to advertise in The Times and The Telegraph once a year that it had done business in the following towns, and manage to run through the alphabet from A to Z, giving the name of a town beginning with each letter." (Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom (1967), pp. 15–16.) "In 1922 Hillier, Parker began to issue annual reports regarding conditions in the property market, [and] [t]hese were quoted in the property columns of The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. [In the interwar years,] "Hillier, Parker grew to be one of the two leading commercial estate agents during this period." (Peter Scott, The Property Masters (1996), p. 41.) Those are in addition to several more incidental references in both books to the company or its reports that could be cited. I hope that's enough to persuade some of the deletionists of the company's notability. GrindtXX (talk) 14:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm not sure that using pejorative terms such as 'deltionist' is particularly useful here. In any case, occasional mentions in even reliable sources may not be sufficient to reflect WP:SUSTAINED. Muffled Pocketed  15:30, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. It was not my intention to use the term "deletionist" in a pejorative sense: I wasn't aware it had one. I meant it in an entirely literal sense: "one who has voted in favour of deletion". On the more substantive point, I fail to see the relevance of citing WP:SUSTAINED, which is a warning against coverage of topics whose apparent notability is fleeting and ephemeral ("brief bursts of news coverage"). I have quoted statements from two solid, scholarly secondary works that Hillier Parker was one of the two leading commercial estate agents in the UK over a 20-year period; and from a third (Morrison and Stamper) to the effect that it played a significant, if secondary, role in shaping the face of the 20th-century British high street. Incidentally, for those who may suspect I have taken quotes out of context, I have now found that a number of relevant pages from Scott, The Property Masters, are available on Google Books here. GrindtXX (talk) 18:12, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. I have 29 news articles from The Times Newspaper Digital Archive to use as a starting point. With citation reference, and URL to the electronic version, for each one. I confess to being a novice at this. Philjones573 (talk) 20:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Estate agents that did little for a hundred years until getting bought by a bigger estate agents? = non-notable. No in-depth coverage of anything approaching encycopaedic value. Muffled Pocketed  10:42, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete without prejudice, pretty much for the same reasons as Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi; being bought by a notable company doesn't make something notable in itself, and none of the "sources" provided above appear to do anything other than demonstrate that the company existed. While I applaud the enthusiasm of the authors there's nothing really to suggest that this was anything more than a fairly generic mid-sized estate agency—a total value of £42.5 million sounds impressive, but is fairly small beer for a London commercial property developer. (To put that in perspective, the market cap of CBRE—the company which bought Hillier Parker—is around $10 billion, and the average house price in central London is about £2 million.) If and only if sources can be found to demonstrate that this company has itself been the subject of coverage, rather than just passing mentions in stories about other companies or former employees who have gone on to be notable elsewhere, I'd have no problem seeing it recreated. As I've commented elsewhere, there are other wikis like MyWikiBiz and Wikia which would be ideal for hosting this if the creators just want to ensure that the record is kept alive and to have a general place for ex-employees to add their reminiscences, without the obligation to follow Wikipedia's rules on sourcing and notability, but Wikipedia itself isn't the place for it. (Disclaimer: I was the admin who declined the initial request for this to be deleted; I'm also the one who reduced the size of this article by about 90% by removing all the unsourced material; contrary to the accusations made above, this was not a case of "biting the newcomers", this was a removal after repeated attempts by multiple people to explain that Wikipedia is not a free webhost or an appropriate place to build a memorial site were ignored, and that it's not possible to buy notability by making donations to the WMF.) &#8209; Iridescent 11:55, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

HPM&R was well known in England between 1900 and 1939. It advertised business and residential property for sale in local papers around the country. Some of them were: Kent & Sussex Courier. Surrey Advertiser. Liverpool Daily Post. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. Birmingham Daily Post. Bedfordshire Times and Independent. It managed all of the Crown Estate land in Regent Street and maintained an index of commercial property rents. This is referred in a letter published in The Times newspaper on 20 July 1932. The will of a Senior Partner was published in The Times on 4 Aug. 1950. The company was mentioned in the obituary of Brian Richards in The Times on 20 Feb. 2002.

HPM&R was appointed to raise the share capital for John Lewis, the department store. This was advertised in The Times on 12 May 1936. It valued Brooklands, the race track, and this was published in The Times on 25 June 1936. And London_Air_Park, published in The Times on 9 Oct. 1934.

After the war, Hillier Parker was behind the development of purpose-built town centre shopping. Manchester. Guildhall, Exeter. Banbury. Peterborough. The involvement of HPM&R was named on the business pages of The Times in editorial articles for each of these. Then the development of out-of-town shopping. On the business pages of The Times HPM&R is mentioned as advising Swindon Council on the development of a very large shopping centre that would attract shoppers from as far away as Wales. The Times, 4 May 1994.

As for commercial property. In 1998 Hillier Parker had 4 offices in London, 3 Scotland, 9 in Europe, 5 in Australia, 5 in USA. The letting of the Egg Marketing Board's new building was the subject of a City Pages article in The Times: Our Property Market Correspondent. "Egg Board's New Building." 20 Oct. 1958.

Its valuation work for British Land and Great Portland Estates was mentioned twice in The Times on 12 June 1990. Matthew Bond. "Unreal time for valuers and investors in real estate". The Times Digital Archive. Web. 2 Aug. 2016. Senior partner David Martin of HPM&R was named in the article and his words were reported by Matthew Bond, business columnist of The Times.

Hillier Parker was named in two High Court actions which were both reported in The Times. Sorry I haven't got the exact dates of those right now. In one, around 1900, Hillier Parker defended itself against a claim of negligence which did not succeed. In the other, in more recent times, Hillier Parker acted for a large commercial property company that was being sued by another company.

I sincerely apologise for my difficulty getting started on Wikipedia. I am sorry for my failure to understand how the referencing system works. I have third party hosting arranged now for supporting material. I am extremely sorry that a goodwill gesture by HE Couch formerly of HPR&R has been interpreted as an attempt to 'buy notability' which is most regrettable and absolutely not the case whatsoever. This has been rightly and ferociously criticised, I have apologised for this already and apologise again now.

Re statement above that requests were ignored. I didn't ignore requests, I responded to them but certainly at first I did not do a good job of explaining. I am sorry for being so slow about it.

Philjones573 (talk) 23:14, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: there seem to be a myriad print sources; I'm unsure as to their quality, however. FoCuS contribs ;  talk to me!  23:46, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete - There appears to be a clear consensus to delete this article. Disregarding the fact that two of the three comments supporting "Keep" are from the same person, and were solicited by the other person who supported "Keep," there's simply not enough material to support a claim of Notability for a defunct company. Exemplo347 (talk) 23:55, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. What has "defunct" got to do with anything? Wikipedia deals in historic notability as well as current notability. And this is the first time I've seen offering guidance to an inexperienced editor described as "soliciting". GrindtXX (talk) 14:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The textbook "The Property Boom" by Oliver Marriott is mentioned in this article from The Daily Telegraph newspaper:

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/3343170/From-Blitz-to-boom.html

And the book talks about HPM&R quite a lot. I have not seen the book yet. There is reason to believe that the subject was instrumental in making the British High Street look the way it does today. I ask for a stay of execution to give me time to gather my sources. I have started with a lot of mistakes but do believe that there is merit in the subject.

The dictionary definition of "defunct" is "no longer existing or being used". Only the name HPM&R is no longer used. The new owner paid good money for the business because they saw the value in it and continues to operate those interests.

I am surprised that repeated mentions in The Times going back a century attracts the comment "unsure of quality". The Estates Gazette is the number one publication for the commercial property world. In Estates Gazette 150 Years Special Anniversary Supplement, 1858-2008, published 31 May 2008, HPM&R is specifically mentioned. I have not had a chance to search the archives of Estates Gazette, yet. Again I ask for time to complete the job.

Philjones573 (talk) 00:31, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note - While I can appreciate your enthusiastic defence of an article you have significantly contributed to, none of the comments you have made address the core reason for the Deletion nomination. The subject of the article fails both WP:GNG and WP:ORG - as has been said before, adding whatever reliably sourced and verifiable information you have to the article for CBRE Group may well be the best course of action. Exemplo347 (talk) 00:54, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment above "did little" can be easily countered by pointing to the fact that HPM&R designed the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, one of the best known shopping centres and a model for many others. Such as the Bentall Centre in Kingston, which was built with advice from HPM&R. These were used as examples for further developements in Europe. It then leased retail units at Bluewater on behalf of Lend Lease, the owner of Bluewater; retail leasing being another activity of HPM&R. Source: Hillier Parker Centenary Brochure. Published 1996.

Could the HPM&R article be labelled a stub with the legend on it "You can help Wikipedia by expanding it". There is plenty of reliably sourced and verifiable material available, some of which I have referred to above, and more of which is still to be collected. The following article from Property Week:

Hillier Parker: privately owned once more: http://www.propertyweek.com/home/hillier-parker-privately-owned-once-more/3014186.article

says, "if anyone ever writes the history of Hillier Parker"... well that is what I am having to do now. I never expected to become the historian of Hillier Parker in the same way as Margaret Gurowitz is the company historian of Johnson & Johnson ("Chemical vs natural, article in Financial Times Magazine, 30/31 July 2016).

Adding to the CBRE page doesn't seem to be a suitable option because CBRE is an American company that originated in 1906. It seems hard to simultaneously describe the activities of one company in California, with another in Britain, on a single page.

HPM&R was the Foxtons of its day in Britain in 1900-1939. It advertised in many local papers weekly all over the country. Unlike Foxtons, HPM&R was a much bigger organisation that dealt with more than residential sales. It dealt with commercial too, shops, offices, hotels for redevelopment. Not just sales but valuations as well, rental management, and then went on to become a company with global reach. Some of which I have alluded to above and on the Talk page for the (barely started) article itself.

For example, the Grand Hotel in Sunderland was redeveloped and HPM&R's involvement in that was reported by Gerald Ely, in "£2m plan for derelict hotel site" in The Times on 11 Mar. 1974.

Hillier Parker was appointed by the Department for the Environment to advise a consortium of 16 local authorities on 'the impact of superstores on market towns'. It also advised local authorities on 15 development schemes in town centres. Source: Hillier Parker Centenary Brochure. Hillier Parker's word was used to help decide what shops should be where and what they should look like. That means it did have "significant or demonstrable effects on culture, society..." according to the section "No inherent notability" aka WP:ORGSIG.

Philjones573 (talk) 02:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The article now has 23 references. Most are to editorial in The Times newspaper. The rest are to British Newspaper Archive; two textbooks; and the company's own literature. I have started contributing to other pages. To Castle_Quay_Shopping_Centre I added the detail about the stone plaque commemorating its opening. Which also explains the change of name of the shopping centre, from Castle Centre, to Castle Quay. To Gamages I have added an account of its auction which was reported in The Times in 1931. I have more source material to add to the article; so it is not finished yet.

Philjones573 (talk) 23:54, 7 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.