LONDON'S OLD FIRMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 130, 4 June 1934, Page 5

LONDON'S OLD FIRMS.

London's trading history is epitomised in a list of the 850 firms that have been established there for a century or more, compiled by the City's Chamber of Commerce. The earliest is a hotel, which lays claim to having been founded in the fourteenth century. Next is the Oxford University Press (14C8) and the third, the first of the industrial firms, is a brewery that began business as long ago as 1492. Of four houses claiming establishment in the sixteenth century, two are banks, one of which had the accounts of Cromwell, Nell Gwynne, and William and Mary. A third is a bell foundry, where Bi" *Bcn and Bow Bells were cast, and the fourth has worked four centuries at ovster laying in Brightlingsca. printing liouse has had many of its customers on its books for a centuiv 01 more, and two city institutions for more 1 than 200 years.