Kent's 100 oldest owner-run businesses, 2026

Some of Kent's businesses have been run by the same families, or the same handful of owners, for most of a century. Some trade under the family name; others are property companies, makers and merchants, some of them filing accounts since before the Second World War.

We started from every Kent and Medway private limited company on the Companies House register that was set up before 1990 and is still active, 3,645 of them. We kept only those that are trading and controlled by people who also sit on the board, which left 1,573. These are the 100 oldest.

The list

Companies are listed by the date they were incorporated, as shown on the register; where two share a date, they're in alphabetical order. The place is the registered office's post town, or the district where that isn't given. The trade is the sector of the company's own SIC code on the register, so holding and investment companies appear under the code they chose.

What they have in common

Most show signs of being family firms. Of all 1,573 owner-run companies set up before 1990, 1,054 show at least one sign of being a family business: two directors or owners sharing a surname, ownership passed from one person to another with the same surname, or "and Sons" or "Brothers" in the name. 78 of the 100 on the list do. 968 have a director who was appointed before 1992.

The most common trades are property (348); shops, wholesale and motor trade (248); construction (248); manufacturing (178) and farming, forestry and fishing (115).

119 were set up before 1950. Survival is part of the pattern. These are the companies still going, not every company that was set up.

Keeping a business going this long

A company that's been going since before 1950 has almost certainly been handed from one owner to the next at least once. If yours is heading for that point, our guides to an exit strategy for a small business and how to sell a business set out the choices, from handing over in stages to selling part of it. And our study of who runs Kent's companies shows how many owners across the county are facing the same question.

How we made the list

We took every active private limited company with a registered office in Kent or Medway in Companies House's data of 1 October 2026 that was incorporated before 1990: 3,645. We left out 947 that were dormant or not trading, 92 residents', single-property, club or nominee companies, 763 controlled by another company, 160 with no individual owner on the register, and 96 where none of the owners was also a director.

For the oldest, we also checked each company's name history. An old company that took an unrelated new name after 1999 is often an old shell put to a new use rather than the same business, so we left out 14 of those. The register's name histories rarely go back before the 1980s, so the oldest names are taken as they stand. That left 1,573. A few are the Kent arm of a larger business whose ultimate owner is an individual. Owners are the people with significant control in Companies House's snapshot of 19 October 2026; directors are those in post on the register in October 2026. We publish company details only, never anyone's age or personal details. We'll rebuild the list each October.