Geoff Wallis Background

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Geoff Wallis

My interest in historic machinery started in 1969 as a student volunteer restoring Crofton beam engines in Wiltshire, the oldest steam engines in the world still at work on their original site. I was amazed at the ingenuity and courage of the early engineers and inspired to follow their example in my career. After completing a five-year apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce Aero Engines in Bristol, and graduating in mechanical engineering at Bath University, I threw caution to the wind and joined the newly-formed Dorothea Restoration Engineers Ltd, delighted to be paid to follow my hobby!

WILL IT SUCCEED?

Appointed director a year later, I threw myself enthusiastically into the exciting new business. The Company offered a completely novel service, conserving historic machinery. We called it 'restoration engineering' and we didn't know if it was viable at the outset. I was newly married then, so my young wife and I gave ourselves one year to prove whether our dream was just that, but within ten years 'Dorothea' employed fifty staff, and had diversified into making replica Victorian ironwork and street furniture as well as restoring historic machinery. Finding this mix of work unwieldy we demerged the firm in 1984, and Dorothea Restorations Ltd was born, owned jointly by myself and long-term friend David Hodgson.

GROWTH

The business continued to prosper, and soon became the UK leader in the restoration of historic architectural and structural metalwork, traditional wind and watermills, and early industrial machinery, with a turnover exceeding £3 million per annum, each year returning a profit. I was elected a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1987, my technical submission being the motorisation of a large beam-pumping engine, somewhat to the surprise of the Institution assessors! In 1988 I drafted the Company's Conservation Policy Statement which was one of the first in its field and lectured widely on the conservation of metalwork and machinery.

INDEPENDENCE

As part of a long-term strategy, in 2007 David Hodgson and I sold our interests in Dorothea Restorations Ltd to a larger family-owned firm of conservation contractors, but Dorothea Restorations is now back in family ownership as part of Wallis Conservation Ltd, run by my son John Wallis as Managing Director.