A brush with history

Britain is world renowned for its contribution to hair care and grooming, and, as its oldest firms will testify, heirlooms come in many forms

- ALEC MARSH

SINCE early man learned to stand on two feet and walked out of Africa more than a million years ago, few things have been constant in the human condition. But one of them is hair. We all have it, and whatever stays with us in the years that we’re given – in some cases not much at all – it is certain to survive us, even after the final parting. Curiously, however, although we are not generally celebrated as a nation of aesthetes, the British have made unique contributions in the field of hair – and continue to do so to this day.

Take GB Kent & Sons, makers of hair brushes since 1777 when Britain was fighting to put down a rebellion in its North American colonies and the invention of the steam train was still decades away. Astonishingly, this firm is still in business and has chalked up Royal Warrants from the past nine sovereigns along the way, all the way back to George III.

The firm continues to manufacture its world-renowned brushes – for hair, teeth and clothing no less – in Apsley near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where it has had a factory since 1901. The site became its headquarters after its London factory in Farringdon was closed in 1940.