Wates Group Ltd is one of the largest family owned construction, property services and development companies in the United Kingdom.
Bradley House and Maydew House on Abbeyfield Estate, Rotherhithe – completed by Wates in 1967
Concrete fuel barges manufactured for military service by Wates
Wates' Leeds University car park under construction, 2015
Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Designed in 1942 and then built in under a year in great secrecy, within hours of the Allies successfully creating beachheads following D-Day, sections of the two prefabricated harbours and old ships, to be sunk to create breakwaters, were being towed across the English Channel from southern England and placed in position off Omaha Beach and Gold Beach.
View of the Mulberry B harbour "Port Winston" at Arromanches in September 1944. Centre and left are "Spud" pierheads with floating piers of "Whales" and "Beetles". At right is 2000 feet of "Swiss Roll".
Phoenix caissons under construction in Southampton in 1944
Aerial view of Mulberry harbour "B" at Arromanches-les-Bains in Normandy (October 27, 1944)
The remains of the harbour off Arromanches in 1990
