Harry John Hyams (2 January 1928 – 19 December 2015) was a British millionaire who initially made his money as a speculative property developer. He was best known as the developer of the

Centre Point Centre Point is a building in Central London, comprising a 34-storey tower; a 9-storey block to the east including shops, offices, retail units and maisonettes; and a linking block between the two at first-floor level. It occupies 101–103 ...

office building in London. Centre Point London

Early life

Hyams was born in

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the Borough of Barnet, North-West London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has been part of Great ...

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

. His father was an importer. After private schooling he joined an advertising agency, then joined an estate agency and switched to property development.

Career

Hyams made much of his fortune developing office space in London at a time in the 1960s and 1970s when rents there were rising significantly. He preferred to find single, blue-chip tenants for his properties, having them fully repair and insure the buildings they occupied, as is now common with commercial property in the UK. This approach enabled Hyams to manage a valuable and sizeable property business with a staff of just six. It was also used by him as justification for keeping his 33-storey Centre Point development empty for years after its completion: he claimed he could find no tenant willing to lease all of space.

Private life

In 1954 he married his wife Kay in

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

. She died 1 February 2011, aged 91. On 19 December 2015, Hyams died at the age of 87. Between the mid-1960s and 2010, Hyams owned the classic motor yacht ''Shemara'', although he is thought to have made little use of her. In 1965 Hyams bought

Ramsbury Manor Ramsbury Manor is a Grade I listed country house at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, on the River Kennet between Hungerford and Marlborough, in the south of England. It belongs to the Capricorn Foundation, a trust which has the task of maintaining the hous ...

, near Marlborough, Wiltshire, and surrounding land for £650,000 – said at the time to be the highest price paid for a private house in England. In 2008, a raid at Ramsbury Manor by

the Johnson Gang The Johnson Gang is the collective name for a group of Romanichal criminals from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, who specialised in stealing fine art and antiques from English country houses over a period of 20 years. The goods they stole are est ...

was described as the biggest ever private burglary in England. In his will, Hyams gave the house and his collections of fine art and cars to the nation via his Capricorn Foundation, in a bequest reported to be worth £450m.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyams, Harry 1928 births 2015 deaths British real estate businesspeople People from Hendon 20th-century English businesspeople