Portals (paper makers)

Portals is a British papermaking company that has had two distinct existences as an independent business, from 1711 to 1995, and from 2018 onwards.

The present company, based at Bathford, Somerset, specialises in paper for banknotes and other security applications such as passports.

[1] The business was founded in 1711 by Henri de Portal (1690–1747), a Huguenot refugee from Poitiers in France, who had come to England as a child with his father.

Whilst there, he made the acquaintance of William Heathcote, who assisted him in the acquisition, in 1710, of the lease of Bere Mill, near Whitchurch in Hampshire.

In the 1720s the Bank of England was looking for a supply of improved paper for its banknotes; it so happened that William Heathcote's uncle, Gilbert Heathcote, was the Governor of the Bank of England during this period, and Henry Portal obtained the contract to supply this paper.