R. Durtnell & Sons

R. Durtnell & Sons was an English building company established in 1591 that had been continuously in the same family in Brasted, in the English county of Kent, until 2019 when the firm went out of business. The first building it constructed, Poundsbridge Manor , was completed in 1593, and it was the same firm that restored the house following bomb damage in the Second World War.

Starting in 1591, the firm that became R. Durtnell & Sons Limited had been handed down from father to son as a private company for thirteen generations. It was claimed to be the oldest building firm in Britain. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the business information provider, at the time it ceased trading it was "the third oldest company in the UK still in operation" – there were only two older companies in any sector in Britain with a continuous existence: Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. However, conflicting claims have also been made.

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