Keynote Speaker at Nachural Summer Business Ball 2022

Cresswell Welch believes hard graft and determination are two of the key ingredients that have helped him grow from humble beginnings to a £50million business empire – without being able to read or write. The 58-year-old businessman, who owns residential and holiday parks from Kent to Scotland, is rightly proud of his tough background which saw his schooling days numbered.

Instead, his parents, Betty and David, instilled in him a work ethic of epic proportions; a mindset that has stood him in good stead throughout his ultra-busy life. The family were from a community on the outskirts of Darlington in the north east of England, but unlike many travellers they owned a bricks and mortar three-bedroom terraced home where they spent the winter months while the rest of the year they would go tarmacking around the country. Welch admits he loved life on the road.

He says: “I went to school for three months of the year but I didn’t really enjoy it. I didn’t fit in – I was always considered the outsider.” He vividly recalls as a young boy aged around 12 or 13 turning up at wholesalers, Reubens, well-known to travellers, with two empty suitcases, almost as big as him, and buying a stock of tea towels, hand towels and bath towels with the grand total of £6 that he had saved up over many months. After knocking on houses, door-to-door to sell his wares, if he returned home with more money than he started he knew it had been a good day! And that is the philosophy that still stands him in good stead to this very day.