Oldest Sweet Shop in the World

The world famous Oldest Sweet Shop claims to have first opened its doors back in 1827 and has traded ever since. Curiously, the shop’s frontage limits its boast just to England (which would usually imply that there is an older rival in another of the home countries), but the website extends the claim to the whole world. As I do not believe in aliens (not ones with intestines and stomachs, anyway), the establishment might legitimately describe itself as 'the Oldest Sweetshop in the Universe’.

Its website waxes lyrical:

Nearly two centuries of expertise and knowledge have gained us an unrivalled expertise in confectionery. This is turn means we are regularly approached and featured in the media, including high profile newspapers, magazines and TV programme

Two centuries of expertise. Whether this is in retail or sweet manufacture, or just surviving the cycles and damage wrought by Labour Chancellors and Tory financiers, I cannot say. Yet the principle is sound: the older we get, the wiser we become. Is this true of institutions, though? Can we say that His Majesty King Charles III’s government is much wiser than George III’s or William III’s? Does the Church of England's Archbishop Mullally possess more wisdom that that of Cranmer or Tait? I suspect not. I have no data with which to test the sweetshop’s claim about its accrued surplus of expertise and knowledge, but I know that churches and denominations which stray from God’s word with each successive generation become darker, wickeder and more stupid.

He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. Psalm 105:8