Yorkshire’s richest people: Who are the top five richest people in the region from Hull, Doncaster, Bradford and Barnsley? Everything we know about Wren Kitchens owner Malcolm Healey, DFS founder Lord Graham Kirkham, Morrisons owners Andrew Shelley, William Morrison and Eleanor Kernighan, Meadowhall owner’s wife Carol Healey and magnate Paul Sykes

In light of this year’s list of richest people in Yorkshire published by Insider Media, we have rounded up profiles of the top five.

There are plenty of people in the region who are founders and owners of multi-billion and multi-billion pound businesses including the owner of Wren Kitchens, Malcolm Healey, and his late brother Eddie’s widow Carol Healey who are placed first and fourth on the list respectively.

Others on the list are DFS founder Lord Graham Kirkham, Morrisons owners Andrew Shelley, William Morrison, Eleanor Kernighan and Paul Sykes. Here is everything we know about each of them.

Malcolm Healey

Malcolm, 79, is from Hull and along with his brother Eddie, who died in August 2021, they started off in the family’s pain business and following that began their own DIY chain, Status Discount, which grew to 63 stores across northern England.

MFI bought the DIY chain from them in 1980 and by 1982 MFI Group and Malcolm’s company, Humber Kitchens, bought Hygena, a kitchen and furniture retail company, from Norcos who were looking to dissolve the company and sell the Hygena name.

Malcolm sold Hygena to MFI in 1987 for a total of £200 million before he moved to the US where he founded kitchen manufacturing company Mill’s Pride, which he later sold for £800 million and moved back to the UK. During the 1990s, Malcolm lived in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 2009 he founded Wren Living, later known as Wren Kitchens, and at the beginning of that year, the business had 82 showrooms across the country, with an yearly turnover of £490 million in 2018.

He bought the online electronics retailer eBuyer from 2020 through his company West Retail Group.

Malcolm and his family were listed the 70th wealthiest family in the UK in the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List, when their estimated net worth was £1.43 billion.

He had three children and owns a 12,000-acre estate near Pocklington called Warter Priory, which he purchased for a reported £48 million in 1998.

His net worth is £1.65 billion as of 2023.

Lord Graham Kirkham and family

The founder of Northern Upholstery and chairman of sofa retailer DFS, Graham Kirkham, 78, was adopted at the age of three weeks and is the only son of Eglington miner Tom Kirkham and his wife Elsie.

He has been heard saying: “My whole life has been the luck of going to a good family.”

Following a successful eleven plus exam, he attended Maltby Grammar School, known as Maltby Comprehensive School since 1967, and hoped to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a pilot. However, he failed to get the required five O levels, so he got a job in a local furniture store.

In 1969, he decided to make furniture after visiting a few manufacturers in his daily work and finding it an easy process. He found that by cutting out the warehouse dealers in the middle of the supply chain, he could sell directly to the public at cheaper prices. Graham rented a room above a snooker hall in Carcroft, and began making furniture upstairs and retailing it downstairs.

By 1983, Darley Dale-based Direct Furnishing Supplies (DFS) became one of Northern Upholstery’s biggest suppliers. When DFS went bankrupt with debts of £900,000 on a turnover of £3,000,000, Graham bought it. Northern Upholstery renamed itself DFS and at the time it had a total of 63 stores employing 2,000 staff.

In 1993, DFS was valued at £271 million on the stock market, with Graham and his family trusts owning more than half of the shares. Profits took a dip in 1998 for the first time in 28 years, however, in 2000 DFS announced a 79 per cent profit increase.

DFS had been sold to a private equity firm Advent International in April 2010 for a reported £500 million.

Graham married Pauline Fisher in 1965 and the couple have two children. He has two houses in his hometown in South Yorkshire including a Grade II-listed Georgian mansion Cantley Hall which he bought in 1990.

He is well known for donating to the Conservative Party which started in the 1980s and by 1996, he had donated £4 million in an interest free loan.

He was given a knighthood in the 1996 New Year Honours. He has also donated to a variety of charities, mainly the Graham Kirkham Foundation, as well as Bradford University to help cancer research.

As of 2023, Graham’s net worth is £1.140 billion.

Andrew Shelley, William Morrison and Eleanor Kernighan and family

William Morrison was the patriarch of the family who founded the large supermarket chain Morrisons and has six children including Ken Morrison, who took over the business in 1956 following William’s death.

Ken was brought up in Bradford along with his five siblings, where his father first started selling eggs and butter on a wholesale basis in 1899 before he opened a stall in the city and then others in nearby towns. Morrisons first began in neighbouring areas in Bradford initially before it was developed into a large chain.

Ken was just 21 years old when he took over as chairman of Morrisons and it was the first self-service store in Bradford, the first store to have prices on its products, and it had three checkouts.

Ken, who died in February 2017 after a brief illness when he was 85 years old, had five children including William, 47, Andrew Shelley, 62, and Eleanor Kernighan, 49, who have come third on the list of the richest people in Yorkshire.

Sir Ken’s offspring own businesses including a farm near Northallerton and holiday lets close to York and in Mallorca.

The Morrison siblings’ net worth is £961 million as of 2023.

Carol Healey and family

Carol, 77, is the widow of the late Eddie Healey, brother of Malcolm and co-founder of Sheffield’s shopping centre Meadowhall.

She married Eddie in 1966 and they have five children, and lived at Westella Hall, Kirk Ella, Yorkshire. Their son James became a Yorkshire amateur golf champion before he turned professional.

One of their sons, Mark Healey, owns a wind and solar power company, Blue Energy.

Carol, Eddie and two of their sons, Tim and James, were robbed and held captive in the family’s luxury home, Westella Hall, shortly after Carol’s 50th birthday in December 1995.

The robbers crashed through the mansion and stole a reported £250,000 in jewellery and cash, then escaped in a getaway car.

Eddie died in August 2021 when he was 83 years old after a long illness.

The Healey family have since been listed as the fourth richest in Yorkshire with a net worth of £886 million as of 2023.

Paul Sykes

Paul, 80, from Barnsley, is a businessman and political donor and opposed Britain’s membership of the European Union and has donated to the UK Independence Party. He used to support the Conservative Party, but backed out due to its support of the Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the EU.

He was the son of a coal miner Edmund Sykes and he attended Raley Secondary Modern, then failed his eleven-plus exam in 1954. Paul left school four years later with no qualifications, had various manual jobs, working largely as a tyre fitter before setting up a business at the age of 18 to dismantle old buses and sell their engines to the Far East for use in fishing boats.

He later dealt in buses, coaches and trucks across northern England. He developed industrial, office and warehouse properties first in London Docklands and later in Wakefield, Salford, Leeds and Rotherham.

He built Meadowhall, then considered the UK’s biggest shopping centre, and in 1999 Paul sold Meadowhall for £1.17 billion. Planet Online used to be considered Britain’s largest internet service provider and in 1998 Paul sold it for £85 million to Energis.

In 2020, he was worth £770 million according to The Sunday Times Rich List.

Paul married Valeria Robinson in 1967 and after 44 years, they divorced and he has vowed not to leave any of his fortune to his children, except for buying them houses, to encourage them to stand on their own feet.

He currently resides in a property just outside Ripon and as of 2023, his net worth is £775 million.