When Poundland founder Keith Smith commissioned craftsmen to create ten Romanesque statues to stand guard around the retractable swimming pool at his home Ludstone Hall, he was concerned that the breasts of one female figure were too small.
‘He asked for them to be enlarged, and that was fine,’ says his son, Steve Smith, who co-founded the budget store chain with his father in 1990.
‘Trouble was that my mother then thought that the willy of one of the male statues wasn’t big enough, so that had to be enlarged too.’
The Jacobean mansion near the market town of Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, is now on the market for just short of £8million
It’s all in the detail — and there’s plenty of it in this Jacobean mansion near the market town of Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, where the Poundland king and his wife, Maureen, lived for 26 happy years — and which now is on the market for just short of £8million.
The two estate agent firms — Fisher German and Peter James — who have been instructed to sell the house should have no difficulty getting people through the door. On the contrary.
Millionaire Poundland co-founder Steve Smith with wife Tracy. The property is an acquired taste, but it’s just as his parents Keith and Maureen wanted it
The Mail’s Mark Palmer in one of the grand reception rooms with its Jacobean features
The problem will be weeding out genuine prospective buyers from those hungry to feast their eyes on the lavish interiors of a house on which no expense has been spared and whose immaculate grounds include a moat (stocked with fish), box hedging in the shape of playing cards, a small army of gnomes and stone animals and a sprinkler system costing in excess of £200,000.
Perhaps the stand-out feature is the indoor swimming pool, which was designed by British Aerospace technicians and has a solid retractable floor which rises from the base in just a few minutes to create a dance floor.
‘When my nan was alive, mum used to put her wheelchair in the centre of the floor and then lower it down a few inches into the water while playing the soundtrack from Titanic,’ says Steve, 61.
Keith Smith, who died aged 79 in 2022, was a draughtsman in a factory in the West Midlands when he met Maureen, who at the time worked on the assembly line at the Ever Ready battery company
Semi-clothed statues around the pool – which also features a handmade oak bar where Keith and Maureen would sit on a stool and have a drink every evening at 6pm
Beside the pool is a handmade oak bar where every evening at 6pm, Keith and Maureen would sit on a stool and have a drink — a Bell’s whisky and soda for him, a brandy and Babycham for her.
Whoever purchases the house and the 180 acres of gardens and land (plus, for an additional £3million, eight cottages) will be buying into the Poundland story, which has to be one of the most inspiring tales of a small-market trader whose business went on to become a stock market giant that is worth billions today.
Keith Smith, who died aged 79 in 2022, was a draughtsman in a factory in the West Midlands when he met Maureen, who at the time worked on the assembly line at the Ever Ready battery company.
Soon afterwards, and before marrying Keith, Maureen became pregnant and gave birth to Steve. The three of them lived with Keith’s parents in their flat in Willenhall in the West Midlands.
‘There was always a feeling that if you don’t work you don’t eat,’ says Steve. ‘Even when mum and dad eventually got their own place in Willenhall, I remember how we used to paint the threadbare carpet rather than buy a new one. We would share a portion of fish and chips between my mum and dad, me, my brother and sister, and we had a lot of broth.’
Perhaps the stand-out feature is the indoor swimming pool, which was designed by British Aerospace technicians
The pool has a solid retractable floor which rises from the base in just a few minutes to create a dance floor
Then, one day, Keith saw a mail order advertisement in a national newspaper for a ‘gross of pens’ (a box of 144 biros) and started selling them one by one to his co-factory workers. In the evenings, he went door to door with his pens and then on Saturdays he hired a small stall at Bilston Market, near Wolverhampton, selling a selection of cheap household goods.
‘He soon realised he was making more on a Saturday than he was all week in the factory,’ says Steve. And, so, the market stall became his place of work — and where Steve and, later, his two siblings spent most of their days and a good number of nights. We couldn’t afford babysitters, so my mum would push me in the pram to the market. As a toddler, I remember them counting out the money on the floor and if there was anything not sold they would put it in the pram and go door to door. We wouldn’t go home until they’d sold everything.’
One tradition at the stall — which would prove to be decisive in the launch of Poundland many years later — was the cardboard box of goodies, all costing 10p.
‘Dad was a shy man and so at 12 noon, he would go to the pub for some Dutch courage. Then he’d stock up the 10p box — and it was emptied almost as fast as he could fill it.’ Cutting out the middle man is no bad thing and so in 1963 Keith started Hooty’s Supplies, a wholesale cash- and-carry business, which became one of the biggest such companies in Europe.
Steve, gifted with the raw instincts of a trader, left school at 16 and opened his own store, Steve’s Discount Market, in West Bromwich.
Mark with Steve at Ludstone Hall’s Poundland museum in an converted coach house
Then came a shock, when in 1990 Keith sold Hooty’s for £2.5million and announced that he and his wife were moving to Majorca to start a new life — and that the rest of the family should move, too. ‘At first we went along with it but the day before our flight, my wife Tracy started crying and said she wanted to stay in England. So I told Dad that we would come out for a few days but weren’t stopping.’
That was when Steve and his father reminded themselves of the 10p cardboard box and how people couldn’t resist it. He said they should start a whole business on the basis of it. Keith clearly liked the idea and loaned Steve £50,000 to set it up.
As it happened, the new pound coin had just been released and this gave Steve the idea of opening a shop called Poundtime, which morphed into Poundland. The rest is lucrative history. In December 1990, the first Poundland shop opened in the Octagon Shopping Centre in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire — and took more than £13,000 on its first day, no mean feat when every item for sale was priced at just £1. The family’s second outlet at the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield was a phenomenal success, bringing in £150,000 a week – and soon there were more than 200 stores up and down the country, with a turnover of £1billion.
Two figures at the entrance of the swimming pool of Ludstone Hall, which has nine bedrooms, four reception rooms, seven bathrooms and a gatehouse with two further bedrooms
Four-poster and open fireplace in one of the historic property’s nine bedrooms
The kitchen garden is immaculately kept and features an extensive greenhouse
In 2002, the Smiths sold Poundland for £70million.
Precious little of the interior decor at Ludstone Hall emerged from that 10p box — or from a Poundland store for that matter. But everything about it is homely, family-orientated, pristine, proud and, in parts, imbued with a sense of humour. A sign at the back door reads: ‘Please remove your shoes and don’t take a better pair when you leave.’
And I was taken aback when coming across a ghostly old man carrying a tray of drinks, which shakes from time to time, rattling the glasses. This turns out to be a battery-operated, full-size dumb waiter. The no-shoes rule, presumably to preserve the thick cream carpet that runs through the house, is still in place, a throw-back to Steve’s mother.
‘Even when she could afford help, she was never happier than with a mop in one hand and duster in the other. And she did all the cooking,’ says Steve. Mind you, the four-door Aga in the marble kitchen, opposite a red leather banquette and views across the moat and formal gardens beyond, would encourage most people to put on a chef’s apron.
Ludstone Hall first became a private house in the late 1550s when, by an Act of Parliament in the reign of Elizabeth I, the Whitmore family was able to purchase it outright from the Deanery of Bridgnorth. It has had just six owners since then, with a soon to be seventh out there somewhere — possibly a businessman with a young family or a Premier League footballer.
In December 1990, the first Poundland shop opened in the Octagon Shopping Centre in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire
A love of wood panelling, gold taps, pink marble, four-poster beds and telephones covered in pink feathers might attract some people. Certainly, it’s an acquired taste, but it’s just as Keith and Maureen — who also died at 79 just 18 months after her husband — wanted it.
There are nine bedrooms, four reception rooms, seven bathrooms and a gatehouse with two further bedrooms. The main bedroom — referred to as the ‘great chamber’ — is a tour de force, with vast fireplace and plasterwork above it depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Next door is the pink en-suite bathroom, with a double bath that can be turned into a whirlpool at the flick of a switch and has star lighting above it. Blinds are operated by remote control.
Gold is an abiding theme, whether it be the taps, the jet-spray nozzles or the chairs. And the his-and-hers dressing room might make Posh and Becks envious — it’s almost the size of half a tennis court and has its own shower room and loo.
The pink en suite bathroom, with a double bath that can be turned into a whirlpool at the flick of a switch
The main dining room features a 20ft table, which was there when the Smiths bought the house in 1997 for £2.5million. ‘My parents asked the seller if they could buy it,’ says Steve. ‘They were told it would cost £1,000 and so they thought it was a bargain — but it turned out to be £1,000 per foot. So £20,000 for the whole thing.’
A red Sir Giles Gilbert Scott telephone box is positioned next to the old milk shed housing the Poundland Museum. ‘This is not included in the sale,’ says Steve. ‘We will send it all to the Poundland HQ in Walsall – and that will be difficult in many ways.’
The museum is a shrine to Steve’s family and includes old newspaper articles about the business, plus essential items that were sold for £1, such as packets of Tide, Omo and Surf detergent.
Some of the marketing initiatives are on display, such as signs saying that the waiting time to reach the tills is ‘two minutes’.
‘If people see a queue, they might leave the shop. So why not put their minds at rest,’ says Steve, who now runs several businesses, including a bridging loans operation, a mortgage broker, a software company affiliated to 2,000 care homes and a burgeoning mobile phone payments firm, which he hopes will be his next billion-pound empire.
Some people were snooty about Poundland. They thought it cheapened the High Street, lowered the tone — but that never bothered Steve or his father. It paved the way for the proliferation of discount stores on the High Street. Steve says he has had meetings with prime ministers over the years about how to get the economy going — but thinks, sadly, that the British people have lost all faith in politics.
And, by the way, he thinks inheritance tax should be abolished completely — and straight away.
‘If people work hard all their lives and pay tax along the way, why shouldn’t they pass on their wealth rather than give it to the Government?’
What else would Steve or his father before him want to pass on to the next generation?
‘Go and work for someone else and learn how to buy and sell,’ says Steve. ‘And then get the balance right. Be a good dad, a good partner if you have one and a good business person.
‘My dad was all of those things. He hardly ever spent a night apart from my mum and she died of a broken heart once he was gone.’
Steve hopes the new owners of the opulent Poundland house in the Shropshire countryside will share some of the values that his parents held dear — but accepts that some of the decor might be lost along the way.