In 1940 the family Hemmings uprooted from London and Woolwich Arsenal and Dad took up a job at the Chorley Ordnance Factory near Preston – same trade, safer place. It was a timely move. The blitz began with a daylight raid by 950 aircraft on September 7, followed by 57 nights of bombing which destroyed much of the East End and City.
Hemmings says: "I clearly remember the barrage balloons in the sky, getting locked into the Anderson shelter and everyone going into big air-raid shelters in the tube station to escape the bombs. I can recall climbing mountains of rubble with other kids and rows of houses that had just disappeared. We lost a lot of family, including my Uncle Paddy, in the blitz.
"I was just over four when we moved up here to 9 Lynton Avenue, Leyland. I soon dropped my cockney accent or I wouldn't have survived."
He was a workaholic in short trousers and says: "I looked at families who were not well-off and then at how the better-off managed things. It was very simple – in the homes where people were doing well the husband worked longer hours. I noticed that when I was very young.
"I listened to people who had achieved things and it struck me the best way was to work hard from the beginning.
"I had two paper rounds and sometimes three, which meant being a bit late for school sometimes. By the age of ten I was working as a petrol-pump attendant, by 11 I had a grocery round for Harry Hindle in Bent Lane with a horse and cart – the horse was called Klondike and every Saturday there would be a 10lb sack of spuds for Mrs Smalley in Golden Hill.
"I worked anywhere I could to make a shilling – skimming the top off the milk in a dairy and raising day-old chicks on warm bags of cement.
"And there were other places to learn – I went to night school and day-release courses. It was a different world and during the war, between the ages of four and ten, I'd go to see my mother's parents, who'd been bombed out and moved into a pre-fab."
After a four-year apprenticeship as a bricklayer, Hemmings started his first building business in the 1960s with £12. It was sold to Christian Salvesen in 1970 for £1.5m.
Hemmings was on his way and formed a massively important alliance with the holiday camp entrepreneur Fred Pontin.
Hemmings eventually led a management buyout of Pontins and later sold the business to Coral. Since then he has owned casinos, Blackpool Tower, hotels, countless pubs, racecourses, brought Center Parcs to Britain and owned numerous businesses plus a backbone holding of ten million square feet of commercial property.
His charity funding has been endless, with the Princess Royal's Carers Trust to the fore, plus the Red Cross, RNLI and Samaritans among many beneficiaries. On the day of my visit he had been a visitor at his local Rainbow House for sick and challenged children around the corner. In recognition, he holds the honour CVO – Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
A spry man, twinkling of eye, he stands tall and straight, probably because there is plenty of steel to his backbone. And he remains unsullied by wealth, largely because he is not the type to be fussed with its trappings.
The clue is that cloth cap, a badge for himself and a signal to others.
He says: "I have my breakfast wearing it. It stands for the working man in the North. And I've always felt like one of them."
Trevor Hemmings owned 100s of racehorses - winning the Grand National on three occasions. He was the owner of Preston North End FC. He latterly lived in the Isle of Man, many describing him as a recluse. In truth he always insisted that his business was his own - no-one else's.
RIP Trevor
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