Pete Marquis

Pete Marquis died suddenly but peacefully at his home at Bryars Farm in Lea, Preston, on Friday 16 October 2026, aged 56. His sister Carol confirmed the news to the Lancashire Post the following morning, saying that his death had come as a massive shock to the family and to his hundreds of friends and colleagues. Tributes had begun appearing on social media on the evening of 16 October. One early Lancashire Post report gave the date as Friday 17 October, but Friday was 16 October and his sister said he had died the day before she spoke.

No cause of death was made public. Hundreds of tributes followed from across Preston and the Fylde, including from QuickStop Metals, the freight businessman Philip Judge, Parbold Young Farmers, where he had once given a talk about his life and career, and many friends he had helped through illness and hard times. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Pete Marquis, known formally as Peter Marquis, spent his life and career in the Preston area of Lancashire. Reports of his death give his age as 56, which places his birth in about 1969 or 1970; his exact date of birth has not been published. He had two sisters, one of whom, Carol, announced his death. Nothing about his childhood or schooling has been reported. Friends recalled that he started out with nothing and built his business through hard work and determination.

Marquis founded Pete Marquis Contractors in 1991. It began as a small two-person team focused on agricultural work and, over the following three decades, grew into a substantial demolition, skip hire, haulage and plant hire business based at Lea Town, west of Preston. His name became a familiar sight on the company's fleet of demolition vehicles, skips, plant and machinery at sites across Lancashire and the North West. He was also the sole director of PDM Industries Ltd, a related waste company.

Colleagues remembered large jobs including work on Preston's new market and the demolition that went with it, the cutting up of almost an entire cement works and the clearance of former pubs and restaurants around the city. The scrap metal firm QuickStop Metals recalled that he once brought cranes and wagons out at 3am to help put back a bridge that one of their trucks had knocked over.

In September 2024, after an investigation by the Environment Agency, Marquis and PDM Industries Ltd pleaded guilty at Preston Magistrates' Court to environmental offences. The company had illegally buried waste tyres at Stanley Lodge Farm on Salwick Road after being told to take them to a permitted facility, and had run a facility handling asbestos without an environmental permit beside Wards House Farm on Lea Lane between December 2016 and February 2023. The company was ordered to pay fines and costs totalling 60,046 pounds. Marquis received a 42 week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and 200 hours of unpaid work. The Environment Agency said both he and the company acknowledged the offences and cooperated with the investigation, and the waste was later removed.

Marquis lived at Bryars Farm in Lea, near Preston. Outside his business he was best known for his charity work. His fundraising began in 2004, when his company raised 4,400 pounds for the Melanie's Magic Wand Appeal, a Lancashire Post campaign for hospital equipment to treat brain tumours in memory of 12 year old Melanie Grant. In July 2024 he said his fundraising had passed one million pounds in 20 years.

His annual Pete Marquis Contractors Christmas Ball at Ribby Hall in Wrea Green raised large sums through auctions, including 45,000 pounds for the Space Centre in Ashton, Preston, which supports children with disabilities; the Lancashire Post reported that some evenings raised as much as 200,000 pounds. He also ran tractor runs and his Rola-Cola Christmas Truck. Causes he supported included Derian House Children's Hospice, St Catherine's Hospice, Trinity Hospice, Brian House in Blackpool and the Katy Holmes Trust, of which he was chief patron in 2014 and 2015. In 2021 he paid 5,700 pounds for a smart car painted as a Little Tikes toy car, helping a Kingswood Homes auction raise 11,500 pounds for Derian House.

Every December he bought and delivered more than 2,000 Advent calendars to children at 15 primary schools across the Fylde, and he helped families with the cost of Christmas. He paid for a new play area at Treales Church of England Primary School. When he was sentenced to unpaid work in 2024 he completed it in the warehouse of the homelessness charity Shelter, and found sponsors for 100 of his 200 hours, presenting the charity with 16,200 pounds in December 2024.

Marquis is remembered as a self made Preston businessman whose company name was known across the North West, and above all as a fundraiser who raised more than one million pounds for hospices, medical research, schools and homeless people. Friends described him as a larger than life character, a gentle giant and a no nonsense, hardworking and genuine man. His record also included the 2024 environmental conviction, which he turned into a fundraising effort for Shelter. His Advent calendar deliveries, Christmas balls and hospice donations were the parts of his life that his community spoke about most in the days after his death.