Sir George Kenyon

Tag : cotton ropes

George joined the business, then dominated by his uncles Arnold,Ernest and Percy, and became a director in 1942. He led itsdiversification into thermal insulation products, although ropesand drive-belts (not only for textile manufacturing but also forsteel rolling mills and flour mills) remained the core of itsbusiness. It grew into an international group of some 30 companies,with factories in Europe, North America and Africa as well asthroughout Britain. George Kenyon was chairman of William Kenyon& Sons from 1961 to 1982, and a director until 1992.
Since the early 1950s he had been increasingly involved in a rangeof other interests and public duties, in part through hisconnection with Sir Raymond Streat, the powerful chairman ofManchester's Cotton Board and treasurer of the university. SpottingKenyon as an energetic young businessman and active citizen, Streatinvited him to join a joint research council established betweenthe university and the chamber of commerce, and in due course tojoin the court and council of the university. He became chairman ofthe university's building committee in 1962, presiding over a hugeexpansion programme and the conception of Manchester's highereducation "precinct", which includes what is now ManchesterMetropolitan University (the former polytechnic), UMIST and theRoyal Northern College of Music. Kenyon was treasurer of theuniversity from 1970 to 1972 and chairman of its council from 1972to 1980, working in a celebrated partnership with thevice-chancellor, Sir Arthur Armitage. He returned to the role oftreasurer from 1980 to 1982, when it became necessary to implementdrastic cuts in the university's spending budgets.
In 1971 he had been asked to join the board of Tootal, and from1976 to 1979 he was its chairman. The amalgamation of a largenumber of traditional cotton and thread-making companies (includingone which traced its origins to Richard Arkwright, the inventor ofthe spinning frame), Tootal was one of Britain's last survivinglarge-scale businesses in a sector that was subject to fiercecompetition from low-cost manufacturers overseas. Consolidation wasseen as the only practical response, and Tootal was regularlystalked by potential takeover predators; but Kenyon succeeded inkeeping them at bay during his tenure.
George Kenyon was a man of robust physique, outgoing temperamentand great mental energy; he was also decisive, fluent and well ableto see the wood for the trees. These capabilities enabled him tomanage a great number of simultaneous commitments: in the late1970s he was chairman not only of the university, the family firmand Tootal but also of Williams & Glyn's Bank, the smallest ofthe five English "clearing" banks, with deep roots in theManchester business community. In the early 1980s Kenyon helped toengineer Williams & Glyn's integration with its sister company,Royal Bank of Scotland, of which he was a director.
He was also a director of the Manchester Ship Canal; a member ofthe Manchester regional hospital board and the north-west regionaleconomic planning council; a general commissioner of the InlandRevenue; co-founder and first treasurer of the Civic Trust for theNorth-West; president of the Arkwright Society; and a long-servingmagistrate. He was appointed Deputy Lieutenant for the countypalatine of Chester in 1969 and of Greater Manchester in 1983, andwas High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1973.
George Kenyon was knighted in 1976. In old age he retained a fundof stories, and a lively interest in local life and the fortunes ofWilliam Kenyon & Sons, which now makes "carrier rope" systemsfor the paper industry.
He married, in 1938, Christine Dorey, née Brentnall, who died in 1996; they had two sons and a daughter.