In the late 1890s blacksmith James Henry Leeke started a small ironmongery business housed in the front room of his family terraced home in Court Street, Tonypandy. Very much a family affair, he worked alongside his wife selling to local miners and their families who were moving in increasing numbers to the area as the coal industry started to grow. In the 1940s, the family expanded the business to include selling hardware and also leased a yard from which to sell building materials. The business then moved to premises on the high street in Tonypandy before the family subsequently bought a disused station in the town where the increased floor space allowed DIY, flooring and then kitchen and bathrooms studios to be added.

In the 1970s the first of the Leekes home department stores opened “out of town” near Llantrisant, just a few miles from the original store followed by another in Cross Hands, Carmarthenshire in 1984 and then Melksham, Wiltshire in 1992. In November 2009, Leekes acquired the Midlands-based ‘Cole’s Home Furnishers Group’ including its flagship store in Bilston, Wolverhampton. In 2016 they acquired Bristol’s largest independent furniture store, another family business, Park Furnishers which continues to operate under its original name. The most recent announcement was of the business’ expansion into Cardiff where it has taken a lease on a store on Newport Road from where it will retail sofas, dining, beds and kitchens.

Each of the home department stores sell ‘everything for the home’ from the bricks and blocks to build a house from the foundations up through to the products for every room from kitchens to bathrooms, sofas to beds and all the finishing touches.

Over 60,000 people that pass through the doors of a Leekes store each week – a far cry from the days of serving customers in the front room of the terraced house of James Henry Leeke.