A family business which has ensured its customers were the best turned-out in Sussex for the past 150 years, has shut.

Wilson's Regency Cleaners has closed the doors of its five dry-cleaning outlets, with the loss of 17 jobs.

The last two Wilsons working in the business, brothers Christopher and Timothy, made the difficult decision to close saying the Victorian ethos on which they ran their firm could not survive the red tape of the 21st century.

Christopher, 61, who started work in the family business aged 17, said: "I'll be sad to go but now various things have caught up with us."

Like many family-run businesses, Wilson's had humble beginnings.

It began with Lucy Mills, who took washing from many of the town's biggest houses into her home in Kemp Town, cleaning it by hand with a washboard, wooden dolly and hot irons.

Lucy's daughter, also named Lucy, followed her mother into the trade and they continued to clean the city's dirty laundry in the same way for the next 30 years.

When Lucy Jr married William Wilson in 1873, he put the venture on a more commercial footing, establishing the Wilson company in 1904.

The company set up shop in Arundel Road, where one of its five outlets has remained for almost 100 years.

It was renamed the Arundel Steam Laundry in the Twenties, with many Wilson family members joining the ranks of employees.

Charles Alfred Wilson, one of the founder-members of the Brighton lifeboat station, took the helm of the firm in the post-war years, overseeing the introduction of automation.

In the Sixties, the company rode the new wave of technology with its first washing machines and in 1963, the company introduced its dry-cleaning arm.

That branch of the business flourished and the company soon opened a dedicated drycleaning factory.

Charles Wilson died aged 77 in 1991, leaving his two sons, Christopher and Timothy, 57, to follow in his footsteps.

They have seen a revolution in the industry in both the technology available to clean clothes as well as the fabrics used to make clothes.

In 1992, the brothers were forced to close the laundry side of their business, with the loss of around 50 jobs, although the dry cleaning business continued.

The loss of laundry was blamed on hotels and businesses choosing bigger, corporate cleaners, which collect sheets, towels and tablecloths in large lorries and clean them at centres outside the town.

Christopher, who lives in Kemp Town, said: "It was a little cottage industry at the start but there have been many changes."

Only one of the outlets, at Fiveways, has been taken over by another dry-cleaners.

The machinery in the factory now sits dormant.

The shops will open at intervals in coming weeks, so customers can collect items of dry cleaning.

Monday April 7 2003