An entrepreneur who rose from humble beginnings to create some of Britain’s most successful construction, property and waste management businesses, has died.
Paul Rackham was a man of restless energy and formidable resilience who built and lost fortunes more than once, yet never lost his appetite for work.
Born in the summer of 1936 in the village of Peasenhall near Saxmundham, Suffolk, Mr Rackham was the son of Basil Rackham, a master thatcher whose family had worked in the trade for more than 300 years.
His mother, Minnie, was a former nursing sister at Halesworth Hospital.
Within months of his birth the family moved north to Walpole, where Basil had grown up, before later settling in Barnham, where Basil became resident thatcher to the Duke of Grafton on the Euston Estate.
Life was austere, but it instilled in Mr Rackham a work ethic and ambition that would define his life.
“What little we had was hard earned,” he later wrote in his autobiography. “A fact of life that not only instilled a strong work ethic in me at a very early age, but also nurtured a hunger to achieve something more.”
From childhood he showed little interest in school but a keen fascination with farming, animals and trade.
Encouraged by his mother’s belief that “everything in life is a challenge”, he began earning money by the age of 10, milking cows, chopping firewood, catching moles for their pelts, shooting rabbits and pigeons, and buying and selling livestock.
Shy and self-described as “a bit of a loner”, Mr Rackham nonetheless possessed what he called “an inner confidence in my own abilities or in my will to succeed”.
That confidence carried him to the Norfolk School of Agriculture at the age of 14, though his business ventures proved so successful that he left early to concentrate on trading full time.
By the age of 20 he was turning over more than £100,000 a year – a considerable sum in the mid-1950s.
His early success was abruptly halted in 1956 when a swine fever outbreak wiped out his entire stock, leaving him heavily in debt.
“The swine fever outbreak didn’t just leave me broke, it left me with a sizeable deficit,” he wrote. It took six years to repay every penny, but he later regarded the episode as “a blessing in disguise” that forced him into new directions.
Those directions led him into earthmoving and civil engineering, working on major projects including the M1 motorway, RAF Lakenheath and Luton Airport.
In 1960 he founded RA Contractors Ltd and quickly secured contracts in Thetford. By the end of his first year, he recorded a £5,000 trading profit and the business grew rapidly.
In the same year he married Sheila Murrell, a hairdresser from West Stow, at Bury St Edmunds Register Office. They began married life with little money, living in a caravan, but success followed swiftly.
The 1960s saw Mr Rackham expand into construction, property development and haulage, while raising a family.
Daughters Jane and Sara were born during the decade, followed later by Rachel. A son, Paul, was born in 1965.
That year also marked his first major business sale when he sold Mobile Clearance Ltd – East Anglia’s first skip-hire operation – for £28,000.
By 1966 his various companies were sold to the Caister Group for £200,000.
Mr Rackham enjoyed his success but insisted money was never his sole motivation. He went on to become master of the Suffolk Hunt, owned racehorses and moved in sporting and social circles - including memorable breakfasts in Newmarket with trainer Arthur Freeman and Lord Lucan, before the peer’s later notoriety.
Behind the confidence, however, lay fragility. In the early 1970s Rackham suffered a nervous breakdown and underwent electric shock treatment.
“Within 18 months I was back to my old self,” he wrote, “the inner confidence having returned.”
A far greater test came with the collapse of Roeday Properties Ltd, a major development business he had built in partnership with a merchant bank.
Plans to sell the company for £6.25 million in 1973 were derailed by a banking crisis and property crash.
The firm went bust, leaving Mr Rackham personally liable for debts of around £1 million.
Assets were sold – homes, horses, overseas property – and the family’s lifestyle was drastically reduced.
“We went from a Rolls Royce and a Mercedes Benz to a Morris Marina,” he recalled. “There were times when I didn’t know where the next penny was coming from.”
Once again, he rebuilt.
Drawing on earlier experience, Mr Rackham returned to waste management, recognising early the potential of recycling.
In 1983 he founded Waste Recycling Ltd and Anti-Waste Ltd in Thetford. Within a decade the businesses were processing 150,000 tonnes of waste a year and servicing 23 local authorities with nearly 2,000 glass collection banks.
In 1994 the companies were brought together as Waste Recycling Group plc, floated on the London Stock Exchange with a valuation of £8.1 million. In 2003 it was sold to Terra Firma for £531 million, marking the culmination of more than 20 years of work.
Having left waste management, Mr Rackham devoted himself to farming at Manor Farm, near Bridgham, close to Thetford – a place he had once passed as a boy dreaming of owning land.
The estate eventually exceeded 2,000 acres, with one of the UK’s largest beef units and substantial arable operations. Even into his seventies, he remained hands-on, rising early and working long days.
One final thing he was well known for was his collection of historic tractors – which went under the hammer in 2015.
The vast and valuable fleet of farm machines, embodying the engineering legacy of East Anglia’s major industry, was collected for more than 20 years.
Its diversity spanned more than 30 manufacturers and covered a period ranging from the First World War to the 1970s.
Mr Rackham said the collection began with one tractor, an International Farmall BM, made in 1951, and bought for £250.
At the time, James Durrant, a rural chartered surveyor, said: “This is a sale that none of us will ever see again. It is 20 years in the making.”
In later years, Mr Rackham published his autobiography, No Time to Waste, hoping it would inspire others.
Paul Anthony Rackham died peacefully at home on January 7 aged 89. He is survived by his wife Sheila, their four children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. There will be a private family funeral.
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