Brazier, is a name that will always be linked to the look and shape of the city of Southampton.

It was 210 years ago that the building company was founded by Charles Brazier, the second son of a carpet weaver, Richard Brazier, in 1799.

Today, many decades later, the Brazier name is still at the forefront of Southampton’s new look as the company undertakes major work, fitting-out the city’s impressive new corporate headquarters, soon to be home to the cruise ship operator, Carnival UK.

In 2009, Brazier Interiors, is one of only a handful of companies which can trace their business lineage back two centuries in a continuous line.

The business worlds of 2009 and 1799 are separated by more than time; the vast changes in communications, transport and industry, as well as economic and social conditions.

History In 2000, the year after the company’s 200th anniversary, a special history of the company was compiled tracing the many developments as one century changed to another.

The company, so closely associated with Southampton, has its roots across the Hampshire border in Wilton, just outside Salisbury.

It was here that Charles Brazier served his apprenticeship as a plumber and glazier. He married, Elizabeth, a local girl, and together they raised eight children.

So, the family business was established and by the 1840s, Daniel Brazier, grandson of the founder, and his young family had moved to Southampton, then undergoing a rapid expansion due to the arrival of the railway from London and opening of the docks.

According the company’s history, Daniel began to work for a Samuel Ingram who had premises at Union Place in Canal Walk, better known as The Ditches, in about 1849.

When Daniel died, his widow, Maria, together with her son, Charles, took out an advert in the Daily Echo which said: “M B takes the present opportunity of thanking those friends for the patronage so liberally bestowed on her late husband, and to assure them that every endeavour will be made to conduct the business with the same promptitude and economy characteristic of the late firm.’’ By the time the First World War ended Brazier and Son Limited secured its first big contract for the Southampton corporation to build 52 houses costing £907 each at Mayfield Road.

Throughout the 1930s the company constructed many well known Southampton buildings including the Burgess Road Library, the old ABC Forum cinema in Above Bar, the Target Inn at Butts Road, the Roman Catholic church and presbytery of St Patrick’s, Bitterne’s Ritz cinema and the Classic cinema in the city centre.

In 1944 the builders developed the area around Southampton’s Royal Pier in the lead up to the D-Day invasion.

After the war, housing was a top priority and Brazier’s was kept busy constructing new homes across the county as well as the high profile contract to rebuild St Mary’s, the mother church of Southampton.

Brazier’s were responsible for the rebuilding of much of the city centre at Above Bar, Hanover Buildings, London Road and East Street.

Ten shop building contracts were completed in 1954, another 16 early the following year and during the 1960s buildings included Marland House, the four storey headquarters of Southern Gas in Above Bar, the city’s Skyway Hotel, now the Holiday Inn and the Southern Television studios at Northam.

In a move described as “pragmatism over sentiment’’ and following the harshness of the UK’s economy during the late 1980s and early 1990s the contracting arm of Brazier’s was sold, later to be acquired by the international company, Kier.