The Family Firm

The Company was founded by Cedric Whitehouse in the 1920s who started making a whole range of sectional buildings for sale at the local market. The buildings ranged from hen houses to Summer Houses and included bungalows and greenhouses. In 1936 Cedric identified the potential of Western Red Cedar and the Company was the first to show a Western Red Cedar greenhouse at Chelsea Flower show. This proved to be a very popular timber for making greenhouses as it had natural rot resistance.
1965 saw the Company pass to Cedric's son Desmond who concentrated more on greenhouses with an emphasis on quality bespoke greenhouses. The family built on their reputation for a high quality hand finished greenhouse and became the product that most gardeners aspired to own. At this time a new design the "Hexalight " was introduced as an attractive practical greenhouse for the smaller garden. This 1960s design is still in manufacture and still very popular as it is the most attractive greenhouse for a small space. By 1990 the Company had moved on another generation. We now continue to produce a range of high quality Western Red Cedar Greenhouses and are also using our skills to restore or recreate Victorian Greenhouses.
We have always employed craftsmen from the surrounding area and these Sussex craftsmen have honed their skills over a lifetime of working with greenhouses. Each craftsman makes a greenhouse from start to finish. Each building is fully erected and inspected in our own workshop, and all sections are clearly marked to facilitate trouble-free re-erection on site. If we are putting your greenhouse up for you it will be erected by the craftsman who made it. This makes each greenhouse very individual; we have a record of who made each of our greenhouses that dates back to the 1960’s. This pride in the job is reflected in the quality of the product you can expect to receive.
There are pictures of the manufacturing process on our workshop page.