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News, Nuggets & Longreads 9 Jan 2016

Here’s what we’ve enjoyed reading on the subject of beer, or what has got us thinking, or both, from the last week.

→ Rock musician Lemmy died on 28 December which has prompted lots of people to consider how, as a prolific smoker, drinker and drug user, he ever made it to 70. Music journalist Jeremy Allen gave an account of discussing addiction and sobriety with Lemmy in 2010, when Allen himself had just come out of rehab:

‘If you overdo booze it’ll kill you,’ [Lemmy] warned. ‘If you overdo heroin… Well, you don’t even need to overdo heroin, just do heroin and it’ll kill you. If you overdo speed or coke it’ll send you nuts. There is a way through it, you can do everything in moderation, you just have to be content with a bit of a buzz and not going to the moon all the time…’

→ Which brings us to the new, tougher UK Government guidelines on alcohol consumption which suggest people ought to be consuming no more than the equivalent of six pints of beer a week. The beer industry and its lobbyists are shouting them down as ‘nonsense’, while anti-alcohol campaigners seem broadly happy with them, especially the ‘no safe level’ line. Our two’pennorth: alcohol has its downsides, but it can also be a lot of fun (there is no safe level of mountain climbing &c.); the guidelines are only guidelines; and we’ll be continuing to take advice from our own friends and families, and our own doctors, rather than strangers with axes to grind from whichever camp.

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Beer history breweries opinion

Breweries with Chimneys: Endangered Species?

The number of breweries in the UK keeps growing every year but, at the same time, a certain type of brewery keeps on disappearing: that is, big old ones.

They have great towers and gateways, their own wells, signs you can see for miles across town, and shelves creaking with dusty leatherbound brewing logs. They were ‘Est.’ between the 17th and 19th centuries. They brew bitter and best bitter and maybe even mild. Their founders might have looked a bit like this:

Henry Boddington I, aged 33, in 1847, a year before he became a partner in the Manchester brewery he would later take over and to which he would give his name.
Henry Boddington I, aged 33, in 1847, a year before he became a partner in the Manchester brewery he would later take over and to which he would give his name.

They are at the romantic end of industrial, you might say, where the whiff of horses and beeswax is potent.

In his 1973 book The Beer Drinker’s Companion Frank Baillie listed 88 ‘Regional (Independent) Brewers’, from Adnams to Young & Co. We’ve just reviewed that list (only quickly, mind) and realised that, in the last 40+ years, something like another 47 of that number has been lost.

(Where ‘lost’ means that the brewery buildings have gone, are derelict, or have been converted to other uses, even if the trading name lives on.)

Here’s the list of casualties as we reckon it:

Boddington’s, Border Breweries (Wrexham), Brakspear, Matthew Brown, Buckley’s, Burt’s (Ventnor), Carlisle and District State Management, Castletown (IoM), Cook’s (Halstead, Essex), Darley’s (Doncaster), Davenport’s, Devenish, Eldridge Pope, Gale’s, Gray & Sons (Chelmsford), Guernsey Brewery Co, Hardy & Hanson, Hartley’s (Ulverston), Higson’s (?), Home Brewery, Hoskins, Hull Brewery, Simpkiss, King & Barnes, Maclay & Sons, Mansfield, Mitchell’s (Lancaster), Morland, Morrell’s, Northern Clubs Federation, Oldham Brewery Co, Paine (St Neot’s), Randall’s (Jersey), Ridley’s, Ruddle’s, Shipstone’s, South Wales & Monmouthshire Clubs, Thwaites, Tollemache & Cobbold, Truman, Vaux, Usher’s, Ward’s, Workington, Yates & Jackson, Yorkshire Clubs, Young & Co.

So that’s about half, allowing for quibbles, some of which have gone as recently as the last five years. That’s something of a counter to the narrative (one to which we’ve contributed) of Upward, Ever Upward, for British Beer!

Yes, we have a lot of breweries now; and we’re still not sure anyone should drink beer they don’t like out of a sense of duty; but this particular type of brewery constitutes a kind of endangered species and that does make us think, well, maybe we ought to force down the odd pint of Wadworth 6X when we see it.

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Beer history pubs

A Longshot: Prefab Pubs

Did you drink in or work at a prefabricated pub in the period immediately after World War II? If so, please comment below or email us at contact@boakandbailey.com!

We’re realistic about our chances of hearing from anyone — you’d have to have been born no later than, say, 1933; be active online; and be sufficiently interested in beer and pubs to come across this blog — but it’s got to be worth a shot.

The pubs we’re talking about were stop-gap measures put up between about 1948 and 1955, most of which were later replaced with more substantial ‘estate pubs’.

Even if you don’t have personal memories of these establishments you might remember hearing your mum, dad, uncle or aunt talking about them, and that’d be good to know about too.

And it goes without saying that sight of any photos, postcards, diary entries or articles would also be very welcome.

Here are some prefabs we know about whose names and locations might help jog memories:

  • The Aberfeldy Tavern, Poplar, London E14 (1948)
  • The Buff Orpington, Orpington (c.1948)
  • The Bunch of Cherries, St Albans (c.1948)
  • The Cherry Tree, Soham, Cambridgeshire (1947)
  • The County Oak, Brighton (c.1948) — vaguely Art Deco in style
  • The Cricketers, Mitcham — original pub destroyed 1941, prefab erected on site and retained as a store room when a new pub was built in 1956. Young & Co?
  • The Dewdrop Inn, Luton (1950)
  • The Golden Horse, Forest Lane, Forest Gate, London E15 (1948)
  • The Lord Raglan, Walthamstow, London E17 (c.1946)
  • The Marquis of Lothian, Norwich (1948)
  • The Mother Hubbard, Loughton (c.1948) — two huts side by side
  • The Pollard Oak, Pollards Hill, London SW16 (1948)
  • The Rose, Bexleyheath, Bexley, London (Kent) (c.1941-1955)
  • The Sign of the Times, Filton, Bristol (1953)
  • The Unicorn, Ilford (c.1948) — two huts at right angles off a central tower
  • The Wayfarer, Filton, Bristol (1953) — the same pub as the Sign of the Times…?
  • Names unknown ×6, Birmingham (c.1950)

UPDATED 16/05/2016: Several new pubs added to the list.
UPDATED 02/08/2016: New pub added.

Categories
beer festivals breweries

Raw Info: Cornish Brewers, 1856

This list of Cornish brewers from 1856 is a titbit leftover from yesterday’s post:

Allen Robert, Killigrew Street, Falmouth
Carlyon J., Mylor Bridge, Mylor, Falmouth
Clarke J., Church Street, Helston
Dodd J., Broad Street, Penryn
Ellery J., Market Place, Camborne
Ellis & Co, Church Street, Helston
Ellis C., Hayle
Hart J., Ponsonooth, St Gluvias, Penryn
Hicks E., Mellon’s pk, Lanreath, Liskeard
Magor, Davey & Co, Redruth
Martin T., Calstock, Callington
Moyle S.G., Chacewater, Kenwyn, Truro
Pearce F., Camelford
Philp S., Stoke Climsland, Callington
Polkinghorne E.S. & Co, Penzance
Procter N., Metherill, Calstock, Tavistock
Rashleigh W., Constantine, Falmouth
Richards George, Wharf, St Ives
Scantlebury E, Par, St Austell
Shepherd J, Exeter Road, Launceston
Stephenson C., Market Jew St., Penzance
Teague W., River Street, Truro
Wheeler J., Torpoint, Devonport
Wright G., Bodmin brewery, Bodmin

It’s from Kelly’s Post Office Directory of Devonshire & Cornwall from that year.

We’re posting it here just in case some researcher Googling down the line might find it useful; we’ll be looking into the two listed for Penzance ourselves when we get the chance.

Main image taken from ‘Alverton: West of Penzance’ by Paul Mason where a credit is given to Bob Watts and Tony.

Categories
Beer history breweries

Q&A: What Do We Know About The Falmouth Brewery Co?

This is the first in our new series of Notes & Queries posts. If you have a question you’d like us to try to answer email us at contact@boakandbailey.com

Do you have any information about Falmouth Brewery or Falmouth Brewing Company? I believe it closed some time around the early 1900s. — Neil McDonald

A quick look at Norman Barber’s definitive reference work A Century of British Brewers 1890-2012 (Brewery History Society, RRP £17.95) tells us that the proprietors of the Falmouth Brewery Co. were W & E.C. Carne, that it was acquired by the large West Country brewing firm of Devenish in 1921 and that brewing ceased in 1926.

Brothers William Carne and Edward Clifton Carne came from an important local family of merchants, bankers and mine speculators and William, like his father, served more than once as mayor of Falmouth.

Though there are earlier mentions of breweries in Falmouth, the first reference to a company by this name that we can find in the newspaper archives is from 1863 [1] when a beer shop selling its products stood opposite Carne’s general stores on Market Street. It was run by the elderly Mrs Ann Allen, born in around 1876 1776. Her sons, George and Robert Allen, were listed in an 1847 trade directory [2] as the only brewers in the town. Robert Allen suffered bankruptcy in 1851 [3] but continued trading as a brewer, without George (who had probably died) at least until 1878.

Meanwhile, the expansion of the Carne brothers’ business can be charted through the same sources: in 1847, they are general merchants; by 1856, wine and spirits have been added to their portfolio (along with guano…); by 1877, the Carnes were boasting in advertisements of being the ‘sole agent’ for the Falmouth Brewery Co’s ales [4] and in 1878 were listing ale and porter among their interests, though still not describing themselves as brewers. At some point, though, they had clearly taken in a stake in the business, or had otherwise come to be identified with it, as an 1868 article refers to it as ‘Carne’s Brewery’. [5] By 1883, the Allens were out of the picture altogether and the the rather grand advertisement at the top of this post appeared in Kelly’s Directory.

Now to the juicy stuff, and what we suspect Neil (a brewer by trade) will be most interested in: what did they brew? In 1889 [6] this was their line-up:

XXX MILD ALE 24s
XX MILD ALE 21s
P.A. LIGHT DINNER ALE 19s
X. MILD BEER 19s
P. PORTER 20s

More than a decade later, in 1902 [7], that had scarcely changed, though the stronger mild had apparently gone, replaced by another pale, bitter-type beer:

XXX. MILD ALE 21s
T.B. TONIC-BITTER ALE 23s
P.A. LIGHT DINNER ALE 19s
X. MILD BEER 17s
P. PORTER 19s

(Does T.B. strike anyone else as a particularly poor name for a beer…?)

There’s nothing distinctively Cornish about that range and it looks pretty much in line with what we know Hicks (St Austell), another Cornish brewery, was brewing in 1912. As to where any brewing logs from the Falmouth Brewing Co might be found, the Devenish archive at the Dorset History Centre is probably the best place to look. It certainly contains brewing logs, though whether any Carne recipes are included we can’t say.

The brewery itself, small but with a high chimney, stood a few doors down from the town hall, about where the Tesco loading bay is now. (There’s a photo of it c.1900 here.) It was demolished to be replaced by an art deco Odeon cinema, itself now gone.

Carne's Falmouth Bitter beer mat, 1980s.In the 1980s, Devenish revived the Carne’s brand name for a keg bitter and bottled ales with a fanciful founding date of 1756.

So, there you go — that’s what we’ve got for now. If we find out anything more on our trips to the archives, we’ll update this post. In the meantime, any experts on the history of Cornwall, or of beer, or both, who have more to add should feel free to chip in in the comments below.

SOURCES
1. Royal Cornwall Gazette, Friday 02 October 1863
2. Williams Commercial Directory of the Principal Market Towns in Cornwall, Liverpool.
3. North Devon Journal, Thursday 27 November 1851
4. Royal Cornwall Gazette26 January 1877
5. Royal Cornwall Gazette, Thursday 09 January 1868
6. West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, Thursday 19 December 1889
7. West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, Thursday 14 August 1902