Maillard’s in Great Union Road, which specialises in character properties and land sales, has been acquired by property management company Buckley and Company, for an undisclosed sum.
The sale of the property business – which will continue to trade under the Maillard’s Estates name – coincides with the retirement of Tommy A’Court, who has worked for the company for more than 44 years and is staying on as a consultant. Mr A’Court for many years wielded the auctioneer’s gavel at the Maillard’s general auctions at Glencoe, in St Lawrence.
Purchaser Simon Buckley explained that his firm had already started some residential property sales through sister company Voisin-Hunter and that the acquisition provided an expansion opportunity. ‘We are primarily a property management business, but a chance conversation while I was doing some work for Maillard’s sparked into a purchase,’ he said.
Mr Buckley said he had already found a new location for the agency at the former Bonhams premises in Don Street and that existing staff member Steve Toudic would be staying on working with Tracey Walsh of Voisin-Hunter. He added that there were plans to expand in the future.
The acquisition does not include the Maillard’s funeral business, nor Curwood’s limousine service.
The owner of the businesses, Joy Morgan, said the offer had come along at a time when they were still looking for someone to take over from Mr A’Court. ‘I was just having a chat with Simon Buckley and it was just an off-the-cuff conversation,’ she explained. ‘We had been looking around for someone, Simon was wanting to expand, and having dealt with him, I felt he was a good person to take things into the future.
‘Part of me will be sad because it has been in existence a long time but I myself did not work on the estates side. Having three businesses to run – in this day and age there is a lot more paperwork to do.’
Mrs Morgan, who inherited the firm from her father, Clive Hacquoil, said that the founder, Hedley Maillard, had set it up in around 1928 and passed it on to his son, also named Hedley. He was succeeded in 1971 by Mr Hacquoil, who began working there in 1946.
The auctions, which began in 1956, became something of a social event, attracting a wide clientele who enjoyed both the spectacle and the bargain-hunting. But the advent of internet auctions such as eBay, coupled with the economic downturn, led to a decline and the last sale took place in 2009.
