Huddersfield firm Marshalls pave the Monopoly board

Nov 5 2010 by Henryk Zientek, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT’S a game we have all played with the family.

Now a Huddersfield building products firm has just secured their own Monopoly position.

Marshalls plc has reached its goal of paving every stop on the London Monopoly board.

The Birkby-based company has just landed the contracts to cover the last two streets that feature on the famous boardgame – after which it will have put down paving across the capital from Old Kent Road to Mayfair.

Its latest Monopoly commissions will see Marshalls providing Moselden stone hewn from the hills above Ramsbottom, Lancashire, for paving in Whitehall and tonnes of prime York stone for the Mount Street area of swanky Mayfair.

The work continues a connection with the capital which began more than 150 years ago when Marshalls founder Solomon Marshall, of Halifax, sold his first flagstones from Cromwell quarry, Southowram, to Exhibition Road in Kensington.

Gordon Hines, of Marshalls’ natural stone division, said: “It may be a case of the poshest place last – but we’ve got there – and there are plenty of other streets in between.”

The company’s Pennine sandstone, for example, covers miles of the capital’s landmarks – including Oxford Street, Regent Street and part of the redesigned Trafalgar Square. The stone comes from four quarries between Halifax, Huddersfield and Ramsbottom. Marshalls secured its monopoly of Monopoly after a major increase in supplies to London in the last two decades – starting with the repaving of Piccadilly Circus.