John Player & Sons
John Player was born in Saffron Walden in 1839, and moved to Nottingham around 1862 where he worked as a draper’s clerk. Several years later he moved onto run his own business, as an agent ofr Prentice & Co’s agricultural manures and seeds, running a small shop on Beastmarket Hill in Nottingham. Alongside Prentice & Co’s products, he also sold pre-wrapped tobacco, which quickly proved to be a more popular product than seed and manure, so over time tobacco became the main product being sold.
Players tobacco interests grew quickly, with him opening a second shop in Seep Lane in 1874, buying a tobacco factory owned by William Wright in Broad Marsh, Nottingham in 1877, opening a third shop in Broad Street in 1878 and in 1881 buying up land in Radford where 3 new factories were built. The Castle Tobacco factory was opened in 1884 in one of the factories, with the other two falling into production shortly after.
John Player died in 1884, and with his two sons not yet being ready to step into running the business, a small group of friends took up the reins until 1893 William Goodacre Player and John Dane Player were deemed ready for the responsibility.
John Player & Sons was swallowed up into the Imperial Tobacco Company during the transatlantic tobacco wars of 1901, with the two brothers taking board roles in the new Imperial Tobacco Company. However like many of the companies that merged into the new Imperial Tobacco entity, John Player continued to operate independently under its’ own brand, and as such the growth of the company continued unabated to the point that in the late 1950’s the company was employing around 11,000 people.
In the mid 1970’s all production was moved from the original Radford site to a new factory in Lenton, and in 1986 the company was taken over by Hanson Trust.
