Denis Hall charts the history of the UK’s most successful business magazine from 1858 to today, then, over the page, a former editor looks back on a more relaxed management era Former EG editor John Clayton was at the helm from 1985 to 1991. A moderniser, he recalls here the changes that took place during his tenure
The year in which Estates Gazette first appeared was one of dramatic change: British sovereignty over India was declared in the aftermath of the Great Mutiny Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace presented their controversial new theory of evolution and the first intercontinental telegrams were sent via the Atlantic Telegraph Cable.
Now, 150 years later, the Empire has been consigned to history, evolutionary theory is scientific orthodoxy and Estates Gazette flourishes in the age of global communication heralded by those telegrams.
All of which would no doubt amaze Henry Allnutt, pioneering conservationist, occasional author and founder of Estates Gazette.
The magazine itself, which was initially based in Fleet Street, first appeared weekly “in the season” and fortnightly during the rest of the year.
The breadth of the journal’s editorial remit at this time reflected the wide-ranging interests of Allnutt himself: he was committed to environmental and conservation issues, becoming Secretary of the National Footpaths Preservation Society, an organisation that campaigns today as the Open Spaces Society. Fellow members included Sir Robert Hunter and Miss Octavia Hill, who went on to set up the National Trust.
For the next 26 years the magazine’s appearance – closely typed opinion columns, news articles (frequently culled from that week’s newspapers), and auctioneers’ and estate agents’ advertisements – changed little.
Allnutt himself published several books during this period, some under the auspices of Estates Gazette, on subjects as diverse as the Franco Prussian War, 1870-71, the law on public access, and the latest advances in road building.
In 1884, Estates Gazette’s direction changed dramatically when Frank Pollard Wilson bought the magazine and set about its transformation.
Described by those who knew him as “something of a martinet”, Wilson oversaw the development of the magazine for no less than 50 years until his death in 1932, when his son Frank Percival Wilson became chairman. He was succeeded by his son Frank Peter Wilson in 1972, who remained at the helm until the magazine was sold to the present owner, Reed Business Information, in 1991.
In 1887, the rapid expansion begun by Wilson prompted a move to nearby St Bride Street, London, where it remained for some 20 years.
During this time the magazine, which was now published weekly – whatever the season – reflected the shift in power within the property world from the countryside to the city.
In 1907, the entire business relocated to Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, where offices and printing works occupied the same premises for the first time. Estates Gazette was to remain at this address until the early hours of 17 April 1941, when bombing during the Blitz reduced the offices and printworks to ashes.
According to one eyewitness account, “nothing remained except some lithographic stones standing like tombstones among the ruins”. But the total destruction of Estates Gazette’s premises – the worst single disaster ever to befall the magazine – did not prevent the publication of that week’s edition, albeit a few days late.
After the war, the magazine moved to Museum Street in 1947 and 10 years later to offices in Denmark Street.
As former editor John Clayton describes overleaf, in 1966, following the compulsory purchase of the building for road-widening (never carried out) as part of the Centre Point scheme, Estates Gazette moved to 151 Wardour Street, where it was to remain for 40 years before moving to Procter Street in 2004.
It was during the property boom of the early 1970s that issues of Estates Gazette began regularly to run to more than 200 pages and the A4 format in which it is still published first emerged.
A display advertisement appeared on the front cover in 1926, with the first full-colour cover being published in 1973. Since then, the “front cover” has become a distinctive feature of Estates Gazette and now has its own annual awards ceremony at which the readership’s favourite covers are revealed, to much good-natured controversy.
By the 1980s, the magazine was one of the UK’s most profitable magazines but, with none of his heirs keen to inherit Estates Gazette, the chairman, Peter Wilson, put the magazine up for sale, so ending more than a century of family ownership begun by his grandfather.
The decision caused a sensation in the publishing industry and bidders for the then 130-year-old title included world-famous names.
The winning bidder was Reed International’s Reed Business Press and its £59.4m purchase in 1990 (the price included the £9.4m freehold of Estates Gazette’s Soho offices) marked the start of almost two decades of constant change.
Since then, scarcely a year has passed without further expansion of editorial content in the magazine itself or the launch of stand-alone supplements, such as Centre Retailing, the EG Rich List and EG Retail.
In 1992, Estates Europe, a monthly newsletter covering the cross-border European investment market, was launched. Known as EuroProperty following the takeover of a rival in 1996, it was the first such title to be launched by Estates Gazette. Last year, the title moved from monthly to fortnightly publication.
In 1995, in a joint venture with Faxwise, Estates Gazette launched an auctions results database, which is now a benchmark service for the sector.
By the mid-1990s, internet usage had begun to take off in the UK and in January 1996 Estates Gazette started to plan the development of its own site on the fast-growing world wide web. The subscription-only site would offer both news and access to the magazine’s archive as well as commercial and residential property databases. On 25 May 1996, Estates Gazette Interactive published its first news stories and, 12 years later, ranks as one of the UK’s most successful B2B websites, with more than 20,000 subscribers.
In the past two years, what is now the Estates Gazette Group has launched no less than three monthly titles: EGCapital AsiaProperty and Real Estate Report (a joint venture with Russian news agency InterFax Group), which is published every week.
News and features now set the editorial pace in both print and online media, but in the 1950s and 1960s it was legal coverage and the affairs of professional societies, such as the RICS and the Chartered Auctioneers’ Institute, that dominated.
Legal Notes and Mainly for Students (now entering its fifth decade in its current form) both date from the 1880s, while the weekly Law Reports (first published in their current format in 1976) continue to display the qualities that were already drawing praise from readers in the 1920s.
The greatest testimony to this legacy is the Estates Gazette Law Report’s citability in court, where it ranks alongside established series such as the Weekly Law Reports and All England Law Reports.
The other pillar on which the magazine has built its relationship with the industry since its inception is book publishing. Hundreds of books have been published under the Estates Gazette imprint, with classics such as Parry’s Valuation and Investment Tables and Modern Methods of Valuation (first published in 1912 and 1943, respectively) continuing to top the property sector’s best-seller list.
The popularity of these and other print and online ventures all contribute to the magazine’s current annual turnover of £30m and very healthy profits.
The Estates Gazette Group employs 157 staff. Roughly one-third are journalists, one-third work in sales and advertising and one-third are research staff contributing to EGi products such as London Office Database and London Residential Research and the property advertising venture EG PropertyLink.
Estates Gazette owners
Henry Allnutt – founder (1858-1884)
Frank Pollard Wilson (1884-1932)
Frank Percival Wilson (1932-1972)
Frank Peter Wilson (1972-1991)
Reed Business Information (1991-present)
Estates Gazette editors
George Mathew (1922-1962)
Ronald Dudson (1962-1974)
Ernest Speller (1974-1985)
John Clayton (1985-1991)
Helen Pearce (1991-1998)
Peter Bill (May 1998-present)
A personal view
Putting the paper to bed
The first words I ever wrote for Estates Gazette – the first of many – were penned in 1964 as a member of a small team of leader writers drawn from the staff of the old College of Estate Management. My last was a similar contribution, written as consultant editor shortly before my eventual retirement in 1996.
In 1964 the offices were in Denmark Street, but they were compulsorily purchased to form part of the Centre Point development: ironically, however, the road widening envisaged was never completed and the Edwardian building is still standing.
The payroll numbered 40 at this time: this covered everyone from the managing director through to the editorial, accounting, advertising and book production departments. The atmosphere in the firm, while certainly not unfriendly, was formal, with most people being addressed by their surnames. The only exceptions were the two members of the owning Wilson family “Mr Percy”, the chairman, and his son “Mr Peter”, a director.
My joining the firm full-time in 1968 – by this time in new offices at 151 Wardour Street – brought the grand total of people in the editorial department to eight, and between us we dealt with everything from sub-editing through to production week by week. Incredible as it may seem to today’s computer-literate generation, there was only one typewriter in the department and only one person who could operate the beast. The rest of us worked purely with pens and biros: anything that was not legible was sent off to a typing pool and when it returned it was in a readable form and ready for further subbing.
Both Ronald Dudson and George Mathew, who although officially consultant editor was still very much a power in the land, had joined the firm in the 1920s and both had firm views on the function of the editor. They agreed with the dictionary definition that to edit is to “assemble, prepare and modify the work of others for publication”. These two highly experienced journalists had never, to my knowledge, written a leading article, yet they were expert at amending the contributions of others. Their eagle eyes could spot failures of logic, weaknesses of style and grammatical errors.
Both Mr Dudson and his eventual successor Ernest Speller spent every Wednesday and Thursday “putting the paper to bed” at the company’s printing works, Walker & Co in Twickenham, a factory loud with the rattle of Linotype machines, the roar of Heidelberg presses and with a strongly unionised workforce that had a shrewd appreciation of its value as the goose that laid a golden egg every week.
The editorial content was dominated by the well-regarded Law Reports and the affairs of “the societies of the land” – that is, the RICS, the Chartered Auctioneers’ Institute, the Chartered Land Agents’ Society and several other smaller bodies. What we know now as “news” as such was considered relatively unimportant. Indeed, I remember one occasion when I had worked hard on a news story which broke on a Thursday morning and Ronald Dudson would not alter a page layout to get it in. He reproved me gently, saying: “You must remember that Estates Gazette is a journal of record. It is not a newspaper.”
The publication’s monopoly position meant that there was little incentive to change but the booming property market of the 1970s made this cosy, traditional attitude no longer tenable. The main catalyst of change was the advent of the Estates Times in 1968 – a Morgan Grampian free sheet – which was the very antithesis of everything Estates Gazette stood for. It was brash, news-dominated, up-to-the minute and, occasionally, very irreverent. Its editor and senior staff were soon well known in the market, unlike the shadowy figures of Estates Gazette, who only really appeared in public at the annual dinners of the main professional societies.
Estates Gazette was coming in for some low-level criticism, which compared it unfavourably with the easy readability and up-to-date coverage offered by the Estates Times. Action was essential and steps were taken to expand the staff and raise the profile of the company. First and most important, the editorial department was strengthened by the recruitment of young, specialist property journalists, a hard-boiled crew who took great pleasure in beating the opposition with speed and coverage of news stories.
Looking back, it is strange to remember the informality with which the company was managed. There were formal board meetings only twice a year and the business was controlled by the five of us meeting for a glass of sherry at 12.30 every Friday.
It was at one of these informal meetings that the decision was taken to adopt a more active approach to EG’s promotion. The first move in this direction was to organise a series of lunches at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s at which the partners of a single major London practice would be invited to join us, together with senior members of the editorial and advertising departments.
These highly successful and convivial occasions were chaired by Peter Wilson, whose affable manner, combined with his encyclopaedic memory for names and faces, made a good impression. This soon resulted in our being on good terms with many of the surveying profession’s top echelon. In addition, we gave advertising and editorial support to many outside events, including the Rugby Sevens at Richmond, the “Story of Christmas” service at St George’s Hanover Square, the Lambert Smith Hampton Ski Challenge and, most important in terms of our international reputation, the first MIPIM exhibition at Cannes.
The first full-colour cover was published in 1973 and proved an immediate and almost embarrassing success, with the number of potential advertisers completely outstripping the number of covers available every year. Then, in the late 1980s, Peter Wilson decided to sell the publication, by then highly successful, thus ending three generations of his family’s ownership, which had lasted for more than a century.
Reed Business Press was the successful bidder and its heavy investment in staff and computerisation has resulted in today’s handsomely produced, lively, topical and authoritative weekly. The change of ownership seemed an appropriate time for me to hand over to the new generation, and so I retired as editor, becoming a consultant, thus following in the footsteps of my three immediate predecessors.
