Our Heritage

Company founded by Arthur Andrews.

A. Andrews was founded in 1886 by Arthur Andrews a journeyman who, by 1895 had been appointed agent for the tile manufacturers Craven, Dunnill & Co Ltd.

Arthur had five sons, Arthur, Cecil, Sidney, Allan and Ernest all of whom came into the business.

Appointed agent for tile manufacturers Craven Dunnill & Company.

Premises purchased on Park Lane with primary business ceramic tiling

First world war saw active service for all 5 sons, Arthur, Cecil, Sidney, Allan, Ernest who on leaving the forces joined the company.

Purchase of Railway Street site in Leeds for £250 to aid expansion of company by Ernest. The workforce is now in excess of 40, and the company expands into terrazzo flooring employing Italian tradesmen to undertake the works.

Rapid expansion of business through out the UK working on major projects.

Key war time contracts carried out for the government and MOD on hospitals, factories and Aerodromes.

Company is split into 5 departments, tiling, marble, mosaic, terrazzo and flooring and expansion continues, with over 300 men employed nationally.

Andrews moved from Railway Street in Leeds to their current premises on Meanwood Road. They did not acquire the whole site, other businesses owned and operated from various sections. There is a plan of the Mathers mill site in the boardroom. With the Meanwood site Andrews acquired a marble company called Hinchcliffe Green.

Completion of the CIS building in Manchester with over 14 million mosaic tiles fitted to largest building in Europe.

Installed iconic Three Ships mosaic which overlooks the junction of King Edward Street and Jameson Street in Hull.

Opening of Meanwood Road showroom premises, opened by the Lord Mayor of Leeds.

Andrews sales division was expanding rapidly and they acquired more warehouse space on the Meanwood site for the import and distribution of East German and Spanish tiles. Andrews already had manufacturing facilities for the production of its own precast terrazzo units.

External sales began to rise and Andrews became the approved supplier for Shell pump base islands throughout the U.K. Increased manufacturing space was needed and Andrews acquired and converted more of the mill building into manufacturing facilities.

Andrews acquired the remaining section to complete the jigsaw on the Mill site. The two storey building was converted into the current offices.

Andrews completes work on its first £1million contract - the White Rose Centre Leeds

Contracting expanded with Andrews becoming the first name on any tender list for Shopping Centres, Swimming Pools and Hospitals. The rise of the Supermarkets in particular generated an enormous amount of work for Andrews contracting division.

Andrews had been the nominated supplier of flooring for Morrisons throughout the 80s and 90s and in 2002 entered into a trading agreement with Asda to do their floors.

By then Andrews major customer, Wm Morrison Supermarkets embarked upon the ambitious takeover of Safeway and the workload quadrupled in a very short space of time. To meet the demand and maintain the level of service required Andrews expanded its contracts division into Scotland and opened premises on London Road Glasgow in 2008 after the acquisition of McCauleys. Shortly afterwards a showroom was also opened on the same site.

Andrews partnered with DMC their major customer of precast units in a joint venture to purchase the well established terrazzo tile and pre cast manufacturer in Chertsey. Only a few years after the purchase of Kengate the countries leading manufacturing of terrazzo tiles QUILIGOTTI fell into receivership and the Kengate stepped in to purchase Quiligotti and maintain a manufacturing division for terrazzo tiles in the U.K.

The Andrews Group acquired Quiligotti Terrazzo Tiles & More

It was decided that the Kengate tile manufacturing should be moved to the Quiligotti site in Manchester and Kengate precast manufacturing should be moved to Andrews in Leeds. Leeds and Manchester only a short distance apart and providing a central location for distribution.

 

We complete works on our first multi-million pound contract – Media City Salford.

Completion of Victoria Gate Shopping Centre in Leeds

This was our most complex project to date. It required 4000m² of granite flooring and all in 13 completely different shades of the same colour, laid out in a particular way to make the pattern on the floor. In addition to this the floor was not flat and had an upwards slope which only made our lives harder. However, the biggest problem we had to overcome was actually supplying the granite flooring that the client requested. The only place we managed to find that did these 13 shades was a huge manufacturing company in China. This required Neil (one of our directors) and Phil (the manager of the project) to pack up and head off for China to confirm that these were the exact pieces we wanted. 

However, it turned out to be all worth it when we produced this true masterpiece which is one of our favorite projects to date.

We complete work on the extension and refurbishment of Westfields White City Shopping Centre in London, at almost £6million this is the highest value contract ever completed by Andrews.

Works begin on the installation of 10000m² of granite paving and 52nr feature columns at Barton Square Manchester. Within the same year we also completed this project.

 

We also completed the exclusive Grantly Hall Hotel. Which was a £1million natural stone project and looked amazing.

Covid.....

This was a massive block for us to overcome as we had come so far over the past 10 years and it certainly wasn’t time for us to give up. So with people working from home for 2 years and scraping in every job we could we managed to survive through these hard times

New Showroom

We started our return from Covid with a bang and decided it was time to open a new branch. This one is in Bredbury, Stockport → Visit Here

January – We opened our next new trade counter and showroom in Seacroft Leeds. To announce the opening we chose to do something special and had Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete Jess Learmonth open the new branch! This was a very special moment for us having a local hero open up one of our new branches!

 

March – As our new branches and trade counters had been so successful for us, we decided to launch our trade branches into an eCommerce website, which we now sell to people all across the UK! So now our customers can come visit us in one of our trade stores or just simply order everything they need online! → Visit Here

July – Our next chapter involved another showroom! This time it is in Irlam, Manchester → Visit Here

 

October – Our current newest trade branch, in Wakefield. This is located just outside of the city Centre so ideal for people to get to and not too far from the motorway. Our trade branches in our recent years have been an extremely effective and successful side to the Andrews business and will hopefully continue to keep growing. → Visit Here

The completion of Mollies hotel and SOHO house private members club. These were two massive projects that we had been working on the whole entire year and with complex designs and a lot of labouring. We got this done well within the schedule set out by the client due to exceptional planning from the team in the office and incredibly hard work by the guys on site. We faced a lot of set backs but still pushed through and got these projects completed.

We have started off 2026 very strong and hope to continue this throughout the whole year!