{"id":14137,"date":"2025-09-07T18:03:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T18:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.wearedeeperblue.co.uk\/history-clone\/?p=14137"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T14:01:13","slug":"kenneth-townsley-starts-gold-medal-travel-in-blackpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.wearedeeperblue.co.uk\/history-clone\/kenneth-townsley-starts-gold-medal-travel-in-blackpool\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Townsley Starts Gold Medal Travel in Blackpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kenneth Townsley is a businessman, philanthropist and founder of The Kentown Wizard Foundation<\/strong>. He was born in Blackpool to ‘working class’ parents in 1945 and made his fortune in tourism. In 2015 Ken decided that having amassed his fortune through hard work and ingenuity, he would dedicate the bulk of it to the benefit of others. So he established the Kentown Wizard\u00a0Foundation to support children with disabilities and life limiting \/ threatening conditions, especially in the Blackpool area.<\/p>\n

Ken started work at Blackpool Airport<\/strong><\/a> at the age of 15 as a Traffic Department Apprentice, doing everything from handling luggage to shipping cargo. In 1970 he opened his first travel shop in Church Street, Blackpool, with just two members of staff. The company was incorporated as Gold Medal Travel Group <\/strong>eight years later on 29 June 1978. It later became Britain’s largest privately owned tour operator. Its registered office was in the Cherry Tree Wing of the Gazette Buildings on Preston New Road in Blackpool but moved in 1990 to Gold Medal House in the Metropolitan Business Park, just off Preston New Road. Their headquarters were moved to the Trident Centre on Preston Docks in 2000 before the company relocated to Lancaster House in Leyland in 2019, the former headquarters of Leyland Trucks. Kenneth Townsley sold the company to Thomas Cook in a multi-million pound deal in 2008, and then Thomas Cook sold it to dnata in 2014.<\/p>\n

Brian House is benefitting from Ken\u2019s generosity at a time when finding new sources of funds to cover their work is so important. It costs \u00a31.3m each year to run Brian House but they currently raise only \u00a3500k in dedicated donations.<\/p>\n\"\"\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenneth Townsley is a businessman, philanthropist and founder of The Kentown Wizard Foundation. He was born in Blackpool to ‘working class’ parents in 1945 and made his fortune in tourism. In 2015 Ken decided that having amassed his fortune through hard work and ingenuity, he would dedicate the bulk of it to the benefit of others. So he established the Kentown Wizard\u00a0Foundation to support children with disabilities and life limiting \/ threatening conditions, especially in the Blackpool area. Ken started work at Blackpool Airport at the age of 15 as a Traffic Department Apprentice, doing everything from handling luggage to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[233],"tags":[177,234,283,346],"class_list":["post-14137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-233","tag-community","tag-234","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-born"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKenneth Townsley and the Rise of Gold Medal Travel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The story of Kenneth Townsley, who grew Gold Medal Travel Blackpool into a travel empire and later founded The Kentown Wizard Foundation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta 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