Walking down Rectory Lane in Brasted, Kent, on a gloomy winter morning, you almost get the feeling that the “Iron Lady” is still there. Even though more than 100 years have passed since her death, the swirling English mist seems to take the shape of this legendary figure, pocketwatch in hand, clocking in Durtnell workers for the day’s first shift. Woe to the poor laborer who happened to be even 30 seconds late. A tongue lashing, or worse, a firing on the spot, was what the Iron Lady had in store.
The Iron Lady, otherwise known as Elizabeth Durtnell, is a key part of the rich and colorful history of this 409-year-old construction company—one of Britain’s most prestigious. Her equally colorful husband was known as “Golden Dickie” to Brasted village children, for his habit of handing them apples he had hidden in his pockets. When Dickie died an early death in 1856, the perpetuation of the Durtnell legacy seemed in jeopardy, until Elizabeth and her son, Richard, stepped in. Elizabeth, people said, ran the company with an iron hand. Saddling up her trusty horse, she toured the work sites and made grown men quake with her pointed questions and shouted orders. No one on Elizabeth Durtnell’s projects wasted time or materials. Workers knew that every last hinge would be accounted for. When she finally died in 1892, Elizabeth was buried in an iron casket.
Of course, Elizabeth and her husband are only part of the Durtnell story. The long line of family leaders has ensured the continuation of a family business dynasty by perpetuating several durable values: strict fiscal responsibility, the wisdom to bring in outsiders at critical moments, and—despite the Iron Lady’s unbending image—a willingness to change. These strategic values have seen Durtnell through many crises, the most recent a mere 12 years ago, and will have to see the company through a daunting new challenge that has just reared its head.
Growth through craftsmanship
No other builder in Europe, and perhaps the Western world, can claim an unbroken chain of 12 generations linking the 16th century with the 21st. The Durtnell family has owned the land on Rectory Lane, overlooking the Brasted village green, since 1496. The English seem to be the world’s best record keepers; the family can reliably trace its roots back to 1180.
The Durtnells can also claim at least a couple of famous clergymen on the family tree. Rector William Durtnell (c. 1524-1596) was one. His uncle, the infamous Robert Darknall IV (d. 1562), was another, he a member of King Henry VIII’s household during the time of the dissolution of English monasteries. He died a mysterious death, probably by a hangman’s noose.
In the 1500s the word “carpenter” wasn’t the umbrella term we use today. It referred to the craftsmen who built the timber frame of a “carpentum” or wagon. It was in this specialty that the Durtnells first excelled, repairing and building farm carts, plows, and wagons in Westerham.
By the time the first John Durtnell teamed with his brother, Brian, to construct their first house (which was to be a home for their father), Sir Walter Raleigh had just discovered tobacco in the New World, Sir Francis Drake had recently dispatched with the Spanish Armada, and Queen Elizabeth I was nearing the end of her extraordinary reign. The house, Poundsbridge Manor, was completed in 1593 and still stands in Poundsbridge, Kent.
From this humble beginning, Durtnell has grown into a modern construction boutique with more than 20 million pounds ($30 million) in annual revenue. Its reputation for versatility and craftsmanship is the envy of its British competitors. The versatility is evident in the variety of projects the firm has taken on—from the Brasted parish church (where 91 family members are buried) to gigantic sports stadiums and multimillion-pound facilities for the British Ministry of Defense.
As for craftsmanship, the company is revered for its ability to carry out high-end refurbishing and restoration on historic buildings. The copper dome of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was replaced by Durtnell. The company has worked on Chartwell House (the home of Winston Churchill), the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and even the ultimate national landmark: Buckingham Palace.
In July 1991, John Durtnell, the current chairman, raised a toast before 200 employees and their families gathered to celebrate the quartocentennial anniversary of Richard Durtnell & Sons. One of the many British newspapers that covered the event noted that this third John in the family’s lineage is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the company’s founder.
Avoid debt
When the first John Durtnell died in 1610, 17 years after completing work on his father’s house, he had securely sunk the foundation of a remarkably well-timbered family business. By 1728 the company had become a much more complex and sophisticated operation. Clients were beginning to look to carpenters to act as general contractors, expecting them to oversee the work of plasterers, bricklayers, and masons. Durtnell was ready to take on this new responsibility.
In the late 1700s ownership passed to another Richard. According to the family historian, Hugh Barty-King, the Durtnells now refer to that Richard as “the family’s prize failure” for accumulating debts and frittering company assets down to a meager 100 pounds.
The kind of indebtedness incurred by Richard Durtnell (2) and David Durtnell (2) is all too typical of small family businesses in their early stages. In today’s buoyant age of Internet startups, fewer and fewer working owners pay much attention to a balance sheet, preferring to focus on a firm’s “product lines” and its “long-term potential.” One of the many instructive lessons about the Durtnells is that, thanks to two early brushes with financial distress, a healthy fear of insolvency became a core family value—from the Iron Lady to current family managers.
One of today’s leading family business executives underscores this point. “We don’t believe in borrowing money,” says Ferrucio Ferragamo, chief executive of the renowned Ferragamo shoe empire and eldest son of the founder. “Independence is healthy. Banks offer you money when you don’t need it, and then want it back when you don’t have any.”
Avoiding debt is a strong undercurrent in dynasties the world over. The Mogi family of Japan, which has owned and operated Kikkoman foods since 1630, includes the following statement in its century-old family constitution: “Don’t carelessly fall into debt. Don’t recklessly be a guarantor of liability. Don’t lend money with the purpose of gaining interest, because you are not a bank.”
Richard (2)’s son, Richard (3), acquired a great deal of local property in the mid-1800s. With his son, Richard (4), he reorganized the company’s accounts in accordance with proper bookkeeping principles. For these reasons, and because the firm counted clients as far away as Surrey, London, and Deptford, Richard (3) was considered “the founder of the modern family business.”
Richard Durtnell (4), who, as noted, earned the moniker “Golden Dickie” for his generosity with apples, died suddenly in 1856 of dropsy. His widow, Elizabeth, took over. If the Iron Lady found nails on the ground she would bark from astride her horse: “Would you walk past a grote lying in the mud, my man? [A grote’s value was about four pence.] In that case, pick up those old nails!” Today her picture presides over the company’s boardroom, and some of the Durtnells think the eyes of her portrait follow you across the room.
Roving eyes or not, it was clear that during her reign the Iron Lady turned cost accountability and fiscal responsibility into a family trademark. Her business acumen influenced her son, Richard (5), who during the transitional years of the Industrial Revolution worked with his own son, Richard (6), to develop the company into both a competitive and a dynamic enterprise.
Hire outsiders in critical times
The latter part of the 19th century saw Durtnell broaden its client base to include the north of England. Richard Durtnell (5) and William Tipping, a local landowner, were influential in bringing the railroad to Brasted. The two joined forces for this progressive venture, but they could not have been more dissimilar in style. Tipping, whose family included Liverpool corn merchants, was a distinguished and somewhat ostentatious town squire. He could often be seen traveling through town with liveried coachmen and standing footmen. In modest contrast, Richard Durtnell often walked.
The company’s growth at the turn of the century forced the Durtnell family to become flexible in ways that would have shocked the Iron Lady. In 1911 the first nonfamily manager, Ernest Golds, entered Durtnell’s executive ranks. Soon after, joint ventures with London architects were signed to enable the firm to undertake increasingly larger and more complex construction projects.
The importance of bringing in a talented outsider at a key point cannot be overstated. Even today, pure pride has prevented family business owners from turning to nonfamily managers and other experts when the competitive climate cries out for such a move. Few family business sins are more grave than believing that “only family members know what’s best for the firm.” Proud as they are, the Durtnells have not fallen prey to this fallacy. Andrall Pearson, a longtime expert on family firms and now an emeritus professor at Harvard, has called a family’s willingness to entrust responsibilities to outside managers a “remarkable” trait. “Often what you find,” he notes, “is a ‘family against the rest of the world’ mentality.”
Treat employees well
About the time Golds was brought in, a formal deed was drawn up for the first time creating the partnership “Richard Durtnell & Sons” between Richard (5), Richard (6), and the latter’s brother, Harry. Under the terms, the brothers owned the partnership property, assets, and capital in equal shares—although this sense of family unity was soon to weaken after an acrimonious split between Richard (6) and Harry. Although the details of this falling out were rooted in a simple personality clash, the way the Durtnells handled the matter—by temporarily dividing business activities between the brothers and by putting the firm’s interests before family squabbles—is well worth noting.
During World War I, the company made do with what hospital and factory construction it could muster. It mourned as Richard (6)’s oldest son, Richard Neville (“Nevi”), was killed in France. Many other employees also fell on the fields of Flanders during the Great War.
Richard (6)’s second son, Geoffrey, who joined the company in 1923 to fill in for Nevi, proved to be another fortuitous “replacement” for the Durtnell family business. His visionary leadership reflected a concern for his employees and a special interest in the future of the firm. Thanks to his longtime friend, respected industrialist Victor Watson, Geoffrey was introduced to the sophisticated concept of long-range planning, and began such a process at Durtnell.
Here, again, we find lessons that are crucial to contemporary family businesses that hope to emulate the Durtnells’ long-term stability. To this day, the family takes extraordinary care to show employees that they’re more than just cogs in the wheel, and in return, the firm has been rewarded with more than its share of highly valuable, longtime mainstays, both in management and out on the construction site. Alas, too few firms of any kind take the trouble to make their employees feel secure and important to the company’s mission. As a result, instead of moving the company forward, some workers may in fact undermine it in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. It is also instructive to note that this appreciation for employees is a marked change from the Iron Lady’s shrill treatment of her hires. Willingness to change outmoded traditions is vital.
As for long-range planning, this vital process has yet to catch on in many American family businesses. For the Durtnells to have committed themselves to it as far back as the 1920s is nothing short of inspirational. To survive and prosper over the long haul, a family firm must think for the long haul. The Durtnells realized this very early on.
Attack new markets
Suddenly, in the late 1930s, the push for British rearmament created a whole new market for the company, and when the firm was named to the Approved List of War Office Contractors, it began to tackle defense work of national importance, including pillboxes, tank traps on the South coast, and an underground command post for the Royal Air Force at Detling aerodrome.
When war broke out in 1939, many a Durtnell repair gang was sent to Whitehall and Westminster to patch up buildings damaged by German bombs. At one point, a rocket exploded right on top of Geoffrey Durtnell’s house; luckily, no one was home. In July 1944, another blast threw Geoffrey’s son, Richard, out of his pram and under a table in the garden. Fortunately, he was unharmed.
The 1950s and 1960s brought, for the first time, large-scale housing development construction under the aegis of “Durtnell Garden Estates Limited”—a separate company formed by Geoffrey, who was now in charge representing the 11th generation. Many of these developments were designed by Geoffrey’s architect daughter, Prudence.
John Durtnell, the current chairman, joined the company as a junior surveyor in 1965 after several years of construction work in Gibraltar. He succeeded his father, Geoffrey, 10 years later. John is energetic, though at the same time somewhat reserved. He seems to have inherited many of his father’s business traits, including the same sensitivity to employee welfare and a sense of community responsibility. “We don’t run the business by ourselves,” he notes. “There are a lot of people out there working away. And they need to be treated fairly and appropriately. Treat them fair, and they’ll probably treat us fair, too.”
Focus on the bread and butter
Refreshingly frank for a CEO, John tends not to exaggerate either his own or his company’s accomplishments. His sense of humor makes room for both the company’s achievements and its failures. In carrying on the family legacy, he’s obviously aware of the importance of putting the business first, and—in part from bitter experience—of the need to concentrate on what the company does best.
Of the many family business qualities that seem to stand companies in good stead over the long term, this key realization—that a business must not lose sight of its bread-and-butter products or services, and that its successes may not be transportable—is one that today’s family managers often fail to see until it’s too late. To paraphrase an old saying, “Dance with the one that brought you to the ball.” The temptation to wander is strong, and it almost brought down the Durtnell dynasty.
The firm tried a series of somewhat risky international ventures back in the 1970s with the construction of an English-style house and various other homes in Toronto, Canada. At about the same time, Durtnell-built homes in New England and California were made available to potential buyers.
Durtnell’s Canadian project was based on the idea of restoring old British barns and shipping them to North America to be re-erected to order. The manor house constructed in Toronto under this scheme was indeed a magnificent building. Fourteen other buildings were completed and about 600 offers were received from prospective buyers after several rounds of advertising and publicity. However, the project ended up drowning in paperwork because the distances involved proved to be too great to ensure appropriate levels of quality. Ultimately, Durtnell found that the undertaking was beyond its capacity and withdrew from the program.
Today, John Durtnell assesses the project with a simple observation: “Good idea, but the timing was wrong.” Interestingly, even though a valuable lesson was learned, the company continues to dedicate itself to “property development, to converting things and making something with distinction,” according to Durtnell. These objectives are viable ones—and central to its mission—while John Durtnell realizes that the company must occasionally work through cyclical problems that haunt all who build.
In the 1980s, Durtnell embarked on a shelter housing venture for senior citizens in the United Kingdom. The project went exceedingly well until the economic slump of 1988, when demand almost ceased. But even though it took six years to sell some of the apartments, the firm stuck with the venture until conditions improved and interested buyers emerged.
Although recent Durtnells have not been men of the cloth, it’s apparent that strong family and ethical values have served them well again and again. John Durtnell speaks of “a spirit of independence” that permeates family business decisions. It is reflected, he says, in the family motto: “Fear God, fear no man.”
Protect the family interest
This theme of independence is played out in day-to-day management. Debt is abhorred, says John Durtnell—sounding a bit like the Iron Lady’s steely-eyed ghost—and the company strives to balance risk with sensible fall-back measures in case unforeseen crises crop up. At the core of the Durtnell value system is the recognition of a responsibility to protect the interest of family members, employees, customers, and shareholders.
“I should think,” he told me, “that we’d rather be thought of as a quality tortoise than a sprightly hare, consistently producing good results, and profits for the shareholders. Happy employment pool, the staff, satisfied customers. It’s a way of life, basically.”
John, who has run the business alone since his brother, Richard, stepped aside in 1984 to pursue other interests, shares company stock with Richard and older sister Prudence. She has two daughters, Mariana, 27, and Anna, 25. Richard also has two daughters, Sarah, 19, and Joanne, 17. John has a son and a daughter, Alexander, 23, and Alexia, 20.
There are several classes of voting and nonvoting stock, and shareholders cannot sell their shares without first offering them to family shareholders (currently John, Richard, and Prudence). This is yet another valuable Durtnell legacy for family business owners with concerns about ensuring stability and family control over time.
In this way, according to Ron H. Drucker, coauthor of Your Family Business, “you can bequeath the voting stock to those heirs whom you wish to control the business and leave nonvoting stock to the others.” Significantly, he adds: “The proliferation of stockholders is a principal reason for the high mortality rates of family businesses.”
Obviously, the creation of two-tier shareholder interest helps to keep a fairly tight rein on who, besides family, may influence firm policy and direction. And clearly, the option to buy shares before they go on the block allows family members to circle the wagons at any given moment and increase the degree of family control.
It will be interesting to see if the Durtnells’ centuries-old values can see the upcoming generation through a new and daunting challenge: sorting out ownership and succession. It’s not known whether John Durtnell has had a sit-down, face-to-face discussion with Richard and Prudence about the subject. “Succession is not one thing but many,” according to family business guru Ivan Lansberg, coauthor of Generation to Generation. “It is not a single event that occurs when an old leader retires and passes the torch to a new leader, but a process that is driven by a developmental clock—beginning early in the lives of some families and continuing through the maturation and natural aging of the generations. Succession always takes time.”
Given these facts, you have to wonder: Is John’s son, Alexander, the only viable candidate for company leadership? What about the others in Alexander’s generation? Have their individual interests in working in the business been adequately explored?
This fine family business legacy has effectively crossed its “t’s” and dotted its “i’s” in so many areas, but now it faces some serious succession questions which, to this observer, must be nailed down soon. As Geoffrey Durtnell says, “It is the privilege of our industry that our work lives on after us, sometimes for hundreds of years. To the past we owe a great debt which we can only repay by building for the future.”
And John Durtnell knows full well that it is time to begin putting the next layer of bricks in place.
William T. O’Hara is executive director of Bryant College’s Institute for Family Enterprise in Smithfield, RI, and is researching the oldest existing family businesses in the world (ife@bryant.edu).
Four centuries of lessons
A variety of classic family business qualities have allowed Richard Durtnell & Sons to stay strong for many generations.
- Fiscal responsibility and an abhorrence of debt.
- Understanding at work that business interests come before family concerns.
- A family tradition of concern for employee welfare.
- Two tiers of shareholders: voting and nonvoting.
- Appointment of nonfamily members to senior executive positions.
- Resolving conflicts between siblings by separating business activities.
- Recognizing that, ultimately, a firm must concentrate on what it does best.
—W.O.
Unresolved issues
To continue their legacy, the Durtnells should consider the following steps to close open questions.
- Put a succession plan in place.
- Enhance communication among family members.
- Develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the immediate and long-term future.
—W.O.