❖ 25 generations of the Balson family · Bridport, Dorset · since 1515

511 years. 25 generations. A homepage that says 1515 above the fold.

A fully built proposal site for R J Balson & Son, Britain\u2019s oldest continuously trading family business. Founded 1515 by Robert Balson on Bridport Shambles, six years into the reign of Henry VIII, and run today by Richard Balson at 9 West Allington with his brother-in-law Rudi Boulay and Adam Gardner. Three findings below, then a working homepage rebuild at /preview/ you can click through.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Counter
9 West Allington, Bridport, Dorset DT6 5BJ Bench
Richard Balson, Rudi Boulay, Adam Gardner Founded 1515, Bridport Shambles At 9 West Allington since 1892

Richard Balson, current Master Butcher of R J Balson & Son, at 9 West Allington, Bridport

9 West Allington · Bridport · Master Butcher since 1515

Richard Balson, 25th-generation Master Butcher. Same family, same bench. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of revenue impact

What the current site is leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live rjbalson.co.uk on 18 May 2026.

01

Britain’s oldest family business opens its homepage with a stock-photo carousel.

Observation: rjbalson.co.uk loads on mobile to a four-slide Elementor carousel showing generic meat-counter images, with the headline "Welcome to R J Balson & Son". The year 1515 does not appear above the fold. The Balson name (the family that has stood at the same counter for 25 generations) is not introduced. A first-time visitor cannot tell whether this is a five-year-old butcher or a five-hundred-year-old one.
Revenue impact: Every other butcher in West Dorset competes on price and provenance. Balsons compete on something none of them can ever buy back: 511 unbroken years on the same trade. That is the line that wins the customer choosing between Balsons and a chain. The homepage does not say it.
Cause: The Elementor builder defaults to a carousel-first home template. Whoever set up the site in 2020 picked the template and never overrode the eyebrow. The "Our History" page exists, deep in the nav, but the carousel never points at it.
After rebuild: The rebuild leads with 1515 as the first thing the eye lands on, the Balson name in the lede, the 25-generation count above the fold, and the carousel replaced with a single recent photograph of Richard on West Allington.

02

The age of the business reads differently in three places on the same site.

Observation: The homepage says "25 generations" and quotes 1515 as the founding year. The contact page reads "From 1880, until this day, our shop has been in West Allington" (Wikipedia and ABC News both cite 1892 for the West Allington move). The merchandise page sells a book titled "500 years behind the block" alongside copy referring to "over 510 years". A careful reader notices three different numbers and assumes the site has not been edited in some time.
Revenue impact: A customer choosing between the Balson counter and a chain butcher chooses on trust. Three different dates on one site is the cheapest possible way to undermine that trust. It is also the easiest to fix.
Cause: Every age string was typed by hand at a different time. Without a single foundingDate field, each page is its own truth, and each one drifts.
After rebuild: The rebuild stores foundingDate once. Every reference ("511 years", "since 1515", "25 generations") is derived from that one number at build time. Next January it self-updates to 512.

03

No Butcher schema, no LocalBusiness, no foundingDate. The Google "oldest butcher Dorset" search has nothing structured to surface.

Observation: View-source on rjbalson.co.uk shows no JSON-LD application/ld+json block at all. No Butcher type, no LocalBusiness, no Organization, no foundingDate, no FAQPage. The og:image is the WordPress default. The schema.org markup tools return zero rich-result candidates for the page.
Revenue impact: Britain’s oldest butcher should win every "oldest butcher", "family butcher", "Dorset butcher since" search. The structured data that tells Google that story does not exist on the site. The chain butcher down the road has more.
Cause: Yoast SEO is installed but Yoast does not write Butcher or foundingDate schema without manual setup. Elementor pages override whatever the theme would have generated.
After rebuild: The rebuild ships a Butcher + LocalBusiness + Organization with foundingDate "1515" + FAQPage block. Every long-tail "oldest butcher in Britain" query has the right answer to point at.

Web stack and gaps, May 2026

From an Elementor carousel home, to a one-page site that earns the 511-year claim.

Current ↗ rjbalson.co.uk

Platform: WordPress 6 with Elementor and Yoast SEO
Hosting: Shared WordPress hosting, roughly £70 a year on a mid-tier UK host
Theme: Elementor default with carousel home template, untouched since 2020
Fonts: Three Google Fonts families requested in full weight ranges, no preload, no display swap
Schema: No Butcher, no LocalBusiness, no Organization, no foundingDate, no FAQPage
Imagery: WordPress media library at original size, no responsive srcset, hero carousel slides at 1500px each
Heritage: "From 1880" on contact, "510 years" on home, "500 years" on the merchandise book. Three numbers, one shop.

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site (Astro 6), one page, no JavaScript framework
Hosting: Vercel edge network, sub-100ms first-byte across the UK
Theme: Custom design, Tudor-red shopfront palette, parchment paper, slate ink, Cardo display serif
Fonts: Three faces (Cardo display, Inter body, JetBrains Mono labels), discrete weights, no opsz axis
Schema: Butcher + LocalBusiness + Organization with foundingDate 1515 + FAQPage, all at build time
Imagery: Responsive srcset, real photographs of Richard, the bench, the West Allington shopfront
Heritage: foundingDate 1515 stored once. Every "511 years" derived from that number. Self-updates next January.

Three-week build plan

Kick-off to live in three weeks.

Week 1

Tudor-onwards timeline hero with 1515 → 1892 → today
Richard, Rudi and Adam introduced by name in the lede
Founding-year strip, with the 511-year figure derived once and used everywhere

Week 2

Counter / sausage / cure / game service block written in the butcher’s voice
Hours block with the Sunday and Monday closure made explicit, with the reason
Real photography on responsive srcset, no Elementor 1500px page bloat

Week 3

Butcher + LocalBusiness + Organization + FAQPage schema, foundingDate 1515
DNS cutover, rjbalson.co.uk pointed at the new pages, analytics enabled
A printed broadsheet version of the timeline for the West Allington counter

Pricing

Fixed price. No retainer. No hourly billing.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, the build runs fully remote from Switzerland.

Build

Full Astro rebuild + schema

Tudor-onwards timeline hero (1515 to 2026), three-butcher bench block, counter / sausage / cure / game service grid, hours block, Butcher + LocalBusiness + Organization + FAQPage schema with foundingDate 1515, contact form, real photography responsive srcset.

£2,000

one-off, fixed

Care

Monthly hosting and ongoing care

Vercel hosting, schema kept current, monthly content tweaks, security updates, monthly analytics email, one editorial change per month included.

£150/mo

cancel any time

Optional

Embedded FAQ chatbot

Trained on the FAQ, the service page and the 25-generation history. Handles after-hours questions about cuts, whole-carcass orders, hours and the sausage list.

£50/mo

add or drop

• One round of revisions before launch

• DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain)

• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost

• Source code handed over on day 60

Frequently asked

Five things worth answering before you reply.

What happens to the WooCommerce shop selling aprons, tea towels and the book?

The aprons, tea towels and the "500 years behind the block" book stay on the site as a small merchandise grid. The rebuild leads with the family story and the counter, and treats merchandise as a secondary surface, not the homepage. The existing WooCommerce stack can sit behind the rebuilt frontend with no change to fulfillment.

The hero rests on Richard’s photograph. Are we comfortable surfacing him?

Richard’s portrait is already on the live site, deep on the About page. The rebuild moves it to where it earns its keep, the homepage hero, alongside the 1515 founding year and the 25-generation count. The walk-by customer sees what the inside of the shop already says: same family, same bench.

How do we handle the 1880 vs 1892 question without picking a fight?

The rebuild uses 1515 as the founding year (the date the Institute for Family Business, Wikipedia, ABC News and the homepage all agree on) and notes that the shop has been at 9 West Allington since 1892 (the Wikipedia citation). The "since 1880" line on the current contact page comes out. One date for the founding, one for the West Allington move, both correctly sourced.

Why is the sausage line worth surfacing on the homepage?

Because the AHDB Service to Sausage Award sits on the shelf above the counter, and twenty-plus house sausages are made on site every week. A customer looking for the Cumberland or the Dorset Knob in West Dorset should land on Balsons, not on Sainsbury’s. The rebuild names the awards on the home and the products on the service grid.

Britain’s oldest family business. Does the rebuild make that searchable?

Yes. With Butcher + LocalBusiness + Organization + FAQPage schema and a foundingDate of 1515 stored once, "oldest butcher in Britain", "oldest family business UK", "butcher Bridport since", "Dorset butcher 1515" all surface a structured result. The chain butchers down the road have nothing to put in that field.

Next step

If the proposal lands.

Reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three Dorset builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 28 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.

Reply to the proposal Open live preview ↗

See the rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

Opens in this tab. 1515 above the fold. Tudor-onwards timeline. Butcher schema with foundingDate. No "since 1880" anywhere.

Open live preview ↗