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The Group's headquarters is located
at the Langley Mill site near Nottingham, first occupied by
Leaderflush Ltd. in the late 1970's.
Leaderflush was founded in the 1930's as a building contractor
but subsequently emerged as one of the major door manufacturers
feeding the post-war housing boom. The 1960's saw further
expansion at Leaderflush with emphasis on fire doors and
development of the complete doorset concept, as well as more
specialised products for particular building types such as
medical, leisure and custodial. In 1989, ownership of
Leaderflush passed to Whitecroft Holdings plc., which had also
owned Longden Doors since 1962.
Moving back in time, Sheffield based George Longden and Sons
was founded in 1838 and grew to become one of the top ten
building and civil engineering contractors in 19th century
Britain. Longden always considered traditional, apprentice-based
craftsmanship and the development of skills as its major
strength. Its contractor business ceased in 1978 but by far the
most important operation - architectural joinery and
particularly top quality, solid timber panelled doors - was
nurtured to produce a real building industry success story. This
was the combination of traditional skills with modern techniques
to meet modern, exacting performance standards.
During 1854 and in a very different part of the country -
Barnstaple, North Devon - Henry Shapland introduced a machine
for creating 'wavy' timber mouldings efficiently and accurately.
This philosophy of seeking engineered techniques to create high
quality, crafted products remains fundamental to Leaderflush
Shapland today. Henry Petter soon joined forces with Shapland,
providing finance and commercial know-how, enabling substantial
and consistent growth. Following the deaths of both Shapland and
Petter in the first decade of the twentieth century, local
amalgamation created North Devon's biggest industry, involved
with hand-carved furniture and fitting out of inter-war cruise
liners and Pullman railway carriages.
After the Second World War, high quality doors became the
company's hallmark and in 1998 NT Shapland and Petter merged
with Leaderflush under the ownership of Whitecroft.
 Then, in May 2000, the
Group purchased North London based MultiSecure Ltd., which had
developed a particular expertise in entrance doorset and screen
systems for the social housing market, adding a new ingredient
to the mix. The Multisecure business was successfully integrated
with the Langley Mill site operations of LS Group Ltd.
In 2003 the LS Group was acquired SIG plc. SIG were the UK's leading supplier of insulation, roofing and commercial interior products with over 400 trading locations across the UK, Republic of Ireland, mainland Europe and the USA. | This acquisition further brought about the formation of SIG Interiors Manufacturing to include Leaderflush Shapland, Komfort Workspace, Cubicle Systems, Tufwell Glass and Longden doors. |  | During 2006, Leaderflush Shapland carried out a re-branding process moving away from the old ‘Leaderflush + Shapland Ltd’ yellow logo to the well known colourful fan used today. Leaderflush Shapland were keen to widen the breadth of product offering for doorsets to include a performance steel option and as such the Birmingham based Fitzpatrick Metal doors were acquired by Leaderflush Shapland in 2008 and were also absorbed within the SIG IM division. | In August 2011, the SIG IM division was acquired by Laidlaw, a leading supplier of ironmongery, integrated doorsets and handrailing solutions. The combined businesses resulted in the transformation of the businesses into Laidlaw Interiors Group. |  |
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