CONSTRUCTION workers say they are out of pocket after building firm Knowles made staff redundant just a few weeks before Christmas.

More than 80 staff at Knowles & Son were called to a meeting last week at its Berinsfield headquarters and told there was no longer any work.

The company, based in Berinsfield, is one of Oxfordshire’s oldest building firms and has worked on numerous key projects for town and gown since it launched in Oxford in 1797, although its roots can be traced back to 1604.

John Lee, 52, of Wallingford-based Lee & Freeman painters and decorators, said his firm was owed about £15,000 after working with Knowles for the past two decades.

He added: “Knowles had been struggling to pay us for about a year.

“They did owe us more about £70,000 but we managed to get some of the money - there is still about £15,000 owing and I don’t know if we will get any of it.

“I think there will be bigger sub-contractors out there who will be owed more than us.”

Carpenter Darren Golder, 49, who lives in Abingdon, with wife Tracey Golder and daughter Tia, five, said he has not been paid £1,500 for work completed on a building project in Wytham near Oxford.

He said: “I have worked for Knowles for the past 20 years so this came as quite a shock.

“I was working on a barn conversion and the plasterers started loading their stuff up and drove away so I knew something was up.

“It’s very sad - Knowles was a historic firm who worked on some big projects.”

Throughout its illustrious history, the company has worked on some of the county’s most iconic building projects, including the Radcliffe Camera and Blenheim Palace.

Christopher Moore, 22, from Wallingford, said he worked in the accounts department at Knowles & Son last year.

He added: “I’m not surprised this has happened. I think management policy was to pay the bigger firms first - they had their favourites.

“But the smaller operations had to wait and I felt so bad for them.”

A former pupil of Larkmead School in Abingdon, Mr Moore now works for Oxford BioMedica as a laboratory assistant.

Knowles can be traced back to 1604 to a complex network of partnerships between a group of stonemasons’ families.

In 1672, a builder and mason called John Towns-end set up on his own, and it was his business, carried on by his successors, that Thomas Knowles took over in 1797.

The firm became Knowles & Son in 1896. Before moving to Berinsfield last year, it was based in Osney Mead which had been home since 1966. Prior to that the business was based in Holywell Street for more than 150 years.

No one from the Knowles & Son has yet commented.