John Murphy (5 October 1913 – 7 May 2009) was an Irish business man who established the construction and infrastructure contractor J. Murphy & Sons. The company, based in Kentish Town, with its green vans and lorries, works on building sites across the UK and Ireland. His late brother Joe also went into construction in London, trading as Murphy Ltd and using grey vehicles, but that company went into administration and closed in 2013.

Biography

Murphy was born at Loughmark, near Cahersiveen,

County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...

. He left school at 15 but found work hard to come by. He travelled to London and started up as a subcontractor in the building trade. The

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

offered him a golden opportunity. New airfields were urgently needed and later on runway repairs were needed also. He was successful in providing this service and at end of the war was well placed to help with large-scale reconstruction. Other ventures included

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. The broad meaning of the term, such as in the history of technology, economic histor ...

, cable installation, water facilities and road-building. At his death in 2009, his worth was estimated at about £190 million. He valued his privacy and was known to spend little on luxuries, instead preferring to spend time with his own workmen and other Irish friends.

J Murphy & Sons

In the 1970s a specialist division of the company worked on the development of

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

. Later projects included the Stansted Airport Rail Link, work in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

, the

Channel Tunnel Rail Link High Speed 1 (HS1), legally the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), is a high-speed railway linking London with the Channel Tunnel. It is part of a line carrying international passenger traffic between the United Kingdom and mainland Europe; ...

and London’s Olympic Park. In 2007 J Murphy and Sons generated nearly £500 million of revenue and made pre-tax profits of £60 million. It was appointed lead contractor in the £125 million

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

water pipeline project, which is to carry up to 100 million litres of water per day. After Murphy's death in May 2009, leadership of the company passed initially to his daughter Caroline, who had been appointed deputy chairperson of the group in 2007. She later planned to turn the business into a worker’s Co-op owned by its 3,500 employees, but other board members — notably her mother, brother and half-brother — resisted, and she resigned in 2014. The company was then led by Steve Hollingshead until the appointment in 2017 of John Murphy's grandson, John B Murphy. In the year to 31 December 2017 the company made a pre-tax profit of £12.43m from a turnover of £711m, and had 3,878 employees. In 2018, it experienced a slow down in growth, and cancelled its Christmas Party as part of a cost-cutting drive affecting jobs across the business.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, John 1913 births 2009 deaths People from Cahersiveen Civil engineering contractors 20th-century Irish businesspeople