When a business goes up in flames it is a devastating experience for all those affected with many families losing their livelihoods.

Often defiant owners pledge to rebuild bigger and better from the wreckage and some manage, despite the odds, to fulfill this promise and make it work.

But not all ventures rise from the flames and many struggle to survive in what are already testing economic times.

KentOnline has got in touch with various firms who saw their premises torn apart by fires to see whether they were able to battle back from the brink.

After 26 years of successful trading in Whitstable Harbour, The Crab and Winkle seafood restaurant burnt down in May 2022 after a fire started in a neighbouring cockle shed.

Peter Bennett, who passed away in May this year, had spoken of his “devastation” and how it had taken just four hours for the blaze to "completely and utterly ruin" almost 30 years of "hard graft".

The owners had invested £800,000 to redesign the restaurant over the years to make it more modern.

The business also had to throw away £60,000 worth of stock following the blaze as the fire melted wiring, cutting off the electricity supply to the building.

Four inches of water flooded the first-floor restaurant from where firefighters battled the flames which caused significant damage to the flooring and the fish market ceiling.

Elizabeth Bennett told KentOnline that there was no re-opening date due to the amount of “red tape” they needed to jump through.

And now – a year and half after the fire – she said the “stress and anxiety is unbelievable” as she has lost her livelihood and is left staring at her destroyed business.

A spokesman for Canterbury City Council said: "We are keen to get the Crab and Winkle restaurant and Fish Market reopened as soon as possible. Repairs to the main structure of the building are our responsibility, and this work is currently ongoing, in coordination with the respective insurers.

"We are working to get them completed as quickly as possible. Good progress is being made and all being well, we will be finished by the end of the year.

"We remain committed to helping our tenant and their insurer wherever we can."

But not all stories end in disaster with the business remaining shut.

The Hooden Bar & Grill, in Ashford, was able to recover and is now thriving.

Known as Hooden on the Hill back in November 2016 the then-pub was destroyed after a fire ripped through the 17th-century building.

Flames had spread from the kitchen to the timbers of the grade-II listed pub and had gutted the entire building.

Jon Robertson, a neighbour who had lived nearby for over 15 years and was a regular at the pub said that the pub is at the heart of the community.

In the wake of the blaze, the landlord, Howard Lapish, had pledged to restore the pub to its former glory.

Reborn as the Hooden Smokehouse and Celler Mr Lapish reopened a year on from the fire in the same building where the original pub had been located.

On his business reopening Mr Lapish had said that everyone loved the new look pub.

He said: “It has been a long journey, but we are all enthusiastic and I think the pub looks fantastic. We’ve kept the old style but with some upgrades.”

Today the smokehouse is now called The Hooden Bar & Grill and is thriving according to the owner's son, Ryan Lapish.

The 22-year-old helps his father run the business which now has a focus on grilled rather than smoked food.

He said: “Business is really good and with summer now here we only expect it to get busier.

“We get a few people out of town and course have our regulars and returning customers which is great.

“After what had been a tough period we have bounced back.”

Not all pubs however rise from the ashes.

The derelict site of the fire-ravaged Green Man pub in Hodsoll Street, near New Ash Green, still sits vacant.

Back in June 2021, a fire tore through the building in the early hours leaving the pub totally gutted throughout and it was later demolished.

In the aftermath, the 7,000-strong community rallied together to raise thousands of pounds for it and devastated landlord Alex Brooks, who had pledged to rebuild the popular boozer "as soon as possible".

Mr Brooks said the fire had destroyed everything but at the time he hoped he would be able to get the pub up and running again.

The dad-of-two, who took over the historic country pub in 2017 with partner Steph, described the support they had received as "incredible".

Before the fire, Mr Brooks had tried to keep the pub going against a backdrop of Covid-19 and the after-effects of Brexit.

The 35-year-old had come through the other side and had spent £25,000 to get the pub pandemic compliant.

But four months after reopening the fire struck, leaving the popular pub, described by locals as the heart of the local community, in ruins.

When it became unviable for Mr Brooks to resurrect the pub owing to the finances, its owner The Stonegate Group declared its intention to dispose of the site, prompting fears it could be sold off for housing.

So much was the support behind the pub that a fundraising page was set up alongside a petition started by villager Sally Samuels to keep the pub in the community's hands which received over 1600 signatures.

The 59-year-old clothing designer who lives next to the now gutted building said the pub used to have a “surprising reach” despite its remote location.

She said: “People still come here to the pub but when they pull up you can see they are shocked to see it’s gone.”

Meanwhile, Mr Brooks is still fighting with his insurance company to this day which he says has stopped him from getting back into business, albeit at a different location.

He said: “At the moment I am freelancing in the hospitality world so I would love to get another pub going.

“Me and my family are settled in this area so we would open here, but we need our insurance to be sorted first.”

It seems to be an all too familiar story for business owners who are trying to get back on their feet.

Another firm to run into difficulty was the Farningham Oak furniture shop, near Eynsford, which went up in smoke in November 2019.

The shop was set within a barn dating back to 1755 and specialised in the sale of modern and rustic-style solid oak furniture.

It was restored by Mr Dzierzek and his wife Teresa in 1996 who moved into the premises from their corner shop, which also sold furnishings on Farningham High Street.

They had just refurbished 'The Old Bull Store' as it was known locally and said business had been good before it was destroyed by a fire – the cause of which remains unknown.

Peter Dzierzek, said at the time that he was "absolutely choked" by the loss of his “fantastic shop and business” but pledged the store would be rebuilt.

Speaking at the time, he said: "I've worked in these walls for more than 20 years. Everything is gone. All the stock has been ruined."

Almost four years later the Dzierek’s continue to trade nearby as “The London Road Furniture Company” from their sister store, a Georgian three-storey building they launched in 2016 in Halstead, near Sevenoaks.

Mrs Dzierek described the loss of the Farningham showroom as “so hard” and said the pair do not plan to reopen that site.

The 67-year-old said: “We put our heart and soul into our family business and while we had another location the two worked nicely together.

“We lost thousands and thousands of pounds from all that went up in flames.

“While the shops were similar we had been at the Farningham site for so long and people knew who we were and what we sold so we have lost that reputation in that area.”