CON T RAC TO R P R O F I L E
Norfolk firm Alan R. Cross & Son can trace its roots back to a returning war hero wanting to set up on his own. Some 70 years later, it’s a thriving business eyeing up steady growth
BY NICK MARTINDALE
Baby boomer The business initially took on work in the domestic and agricultural sector, and Alan soon found himself having to take on extra staff. His young son Richard would also join him on jobs as a child, and eventually joined the company himself in 1977, after completing his apprenticeship and working with a number of other local firms for several years. “The company name was originally Alan Cross Electrical but it then became Alan R. Cross & Son, which is the company name we still have to this day,” says Kevin. Over time, Richard took on more of the day-to-day running of the firm, and Alan retired completely in 1985. Kevin himself joined the business just a year later, having being made redundant from his job as a fire alarm technician. “I lived in a village about four miles from Wymondham and purely by chance my mother met a friend in Wymondham who was Richard Cross’s next door neighbour,” he recalls. “She told her
Company Alan R. Cross & Son Established 1950 Major projects BUUK Infrastructure head office; installing library automation systems for Norfolk County Council (L-R) Diane Marsh, Tracey Brown, Richard Cross, Kevin Hurn, George Kerry, Alistair Henderson, Ian Newitt and Terry Bobbin
that Richard was looking to employ an apprentice electrician. I made contact, went for an interview and got the job.” By this time, the main focus of the business was agricultural and industrial work, and Kevin threw himself into it. “I didn’t really enjoy the domestic house-bashing work, although we did have people who did that,” he says. “I worked on the
IMAGES: © TONY BUCKINGHAM / UNP
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n 1945, as the country was starting its slow process of recovery after the Second World War, a man in his mid-20s returned to his home in Norfolk from serving in the Royal Corp of Signals, where his tasks included laying cables behind enemy lines. It’s hard to imagine the horrors Alan Cross must have endured, but it left him with a love of electrical engineering, and started him on a journey that would lead him to start up his own business five years later. “He gained employment with a local electrical contractor called Gerald Lee based in Attleborough and worked there for five years, and then in 1950 he decided it was time to branch out on his own,” says Kevin Hurn, who is now contracts manager and director of Alan R. Cross & Son – the current form of that fledgling firm. “He set up as a sole trader, initially just doing work in the local village of Wicklewood, using a trade bike with tools and materials strapped to it.”
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