Back in 1890, a 35-year old joiner, Frederick Shepherd set up his own business, which quickly achieved success in speculative house building. He was later assisted by two sons, William, the elder, and Frederick Welton.

William Shepherd
decided to emigrate to
America in 1910.

The founding Frederick Shepherd died in 1930, although Frederick Welton had been a driving force in the company for some time and had been instrumental in developing the firm’s main premises at Blue Bridge Lane, beside the River Ouse, which were to remain the Shepherd head office premises until 1995.

By the time World War II broke out, F Shepherd and Son Ltd was a substantial builder, with a workforce of around 700, engaged on projects in many parts of the north east of England.

Experience in handling cement in bulk on sites led to the formation of Portasilo Ltd in 1953, to design and manufacture portable cement silos. Portasilo would go on to become the UK’s leading supplier of portable cement silos, and also offered customised bulk handling operations for major companies. But it was an entirely new product that dominated Portasilo’s sales by the early 1970s. This was the Portaloo portable toilet unit (originally called Portablu), launched in 1966. Very quickly the product dominated the UK market, manufacturing capacity had to be expanded at Huntington and a separate Portaloo division was formed in 1971. Portasilo’s innovative streak continued with the introduction of the Portastor range of compact and secure storage systems in 1974. New products were under constant development.

With a growing awareness of the inadequacy of building site accommodation, a new type of unit was developed with telescopic legs. Portasilo accommodation was built to a high standard, could be positioned easily, and moved quickly to a new site. These Portakabin units were immediately marketed outside the Shepherd business, and indeed outside the construction industry, and they rapidly became famous.

Initially, these revolutionary cabins were made by Shepherd Woodwork but a new company, Portakabin, was soon formed and a purpose-built manufacturing facility developed at Huntington in York.

In 1962 the structure of the business was reorganised. A new holding company, Shepherd Building Group Limited, was formed.

The outcome was a decision to focus future investment on significant sustainable development opportunities such as the continued UK and European expansion of its Portakabin operation.

At the same time, the Shepherd Group Board recognised that the Group’s construction-related businesses needed scale in order to capitalise on their full potential and the market opportunities arising out of their acknowledged technical capability.

The aim was to ensure the best possible future opportunity for all the businesses resulting in strategic decision to sell Shepherd Construction, Shepherd Engineering Services, Shepherd Facilities Management and Shepherd Homes to organisations better able to build on their achievements. The final element of this review was the wind down of the Portasilo and Portastor businesses which concluded in 2019.

On 1 September 2015 Shepherd Group completed the sale of two of its remaining Built Environment businesses to Wates Group - the interests involved were Shepherd Engineering Services and Shepherd FM, its facilities management company. In addition to this, Wates Group also acquired a significant number of contracts and frameworks from Shepherd Construction Limited.