our history

The H. Burtwistle & Son family business was set up in 1956 by my grandfather, Henry Burtwistle, and my father, John, at Causeway Farm in Thorne. For 60 years, our family have been producing a variety of crops including potatoes, sugar beet and barley. Recently, we’ve concentrated on growing wheat to supply a processing plant in Hull turning it into biofuel. We also grow oil seed rape to be used as cooking oil.

In 1979, Henry retired and I, Paul Burtwistle, took over his share of the business partnership. I realised that there was a demand for commercial storage, so started using our redundant straw and animal feed sheds to store other peoples’ products. We joined the United Kingdom Warehousing Association in 1986.

Over the years, we advertised our commercial storage facilities and occasionally received a call from the general public with the question, “can you store my furniture?” Having said “sorry we do not store household products” on many occasions, we decided that we ought to stop saying no and start saying yes! So, we transformed some of our disused pigsties into clean and secure storage units. As the demand increased, we kept converting more units. We now have 37 units ideal for storing anything from boxes of belongings to classic cars.