Our History
Conference Centre Oxford began life in 1861 as the South Wales & Cannock Chase Coal and Coke Company Limited distributing coal mined on Cannock Chase and in South Wales. The original shareholders were Midland business families and some of their descendants remain shareholders to this day.
Prominent amongst those family shareholders was Thomas (Tony) Trotter who, after war service flying Sunderland flying boats in the Atlantic and Norwegian Campaigns and post-war service in Europe, left the RAF in the 1960’s to revive his family’s investment in the now rather moribund Cannock Chase. Assisted by John Darch, whose great grandfather had been Company Secretary in the late 19th century, he set about exploiting the traditional link between Coal Distribution and Household Removals, selling the coal business to the British Anthracite Corporation and investing the proceeds in acquiring for CANnock Chase Coals the Farnham based removal company of TAYlor and Anderson (thus giving birth to the present CANTAY).
Pursuing an aggressive expansion policy, they guided the Company through the trauma of transport de-regulation under the 1968 Transport Act, the changes brought about by the containerisation of deep sea removals, the de-regulation of European transport and the containerisation of household storage.
In 1971 Cantay bought the Oxford removers Archer Cowley and Company Limited. Archer Cowley (founded 1857) had a warehouse in Park End Street (now Cantay House) and a very high reputation in the city for shipping and storage services to the administrators of the British Empire. Under Cantay the packing hall and garage (now occupied by the downstairs rooms of Conference Centre Oxford) became a thriving household furniture groupage operation together with a successful antique packing and shipping service.
In 1987 Cantay House succumbed to the combined pressure of westward expansion of the city centre and the advance of container storage for household goods by converting the packing halls into sale rooms for Phillips (now Bonhams), the international auctioneers, and the remainder to a mixed office, recreation and retail use site (including the antiquarian bookshop Waterfields – now in Oxford High Street).