Monday 19 December 2016

Reid tied houses and free trade 1830 - 1875

Still not done with tied houses. This time we're looking at another of the big London Porter breweries: Reid.

I used to think that Reid's brewery had totally disappeared. It was situated on the junction of Clerkenwell Road and Leather Lane. The site is currently occupied by a block of housing. But there was another part of the brewery on the other side of Leather Lane and part of that survives.Though the name Reid lived on for several decades as a Stout brand of Watney's.

I really should do more with the Reid brewing records I have photos of. I've not gone through them all properly yet. Not sure why, as they were the first ones I collected around ten years ago.

Back to their tied houses. If you remember, Barclay Perkins went from 51 owned pubs in 1830 to 29 in 1875. But for a large part of the period inbetween the numbers were quite stable. At Reid, there was a fall pretty much throughout and resulted in them owning less than a third as many pubs as when they started.

It's frustrating that the table doesn't extend a little later. Because I'm sure the trend towards sales rather purchases would have been reversed. I think the trends in pub ownership can be accounted for by licensing legislation.

Why would a brewers start selling off pubs after 1830? It must surely be connected with the Beer Act of that year. The thing that established beer houses and led to a big increase in the number of pubs, especially in London. As a consequence, they were more outlets for a brewer to choose from, meaning there wasn't such a big need to own pubs.

The beer house provisions in the Beer Act were mostly reversed by the 1869 Licensing Act. This made it nigh on impossible to obtain a new pub licence and even actively tried to reduce the number of licensed premises. Making outlets scarcer and more difficult to obtain. Leading to a mad rush to buy pubs.

Here's the table:

Reid tied houses and free trade 1830 - 1875
Year Owned % Loan % Free % total barrels brewed barrels per pub
1830 168 27.3 355 57.7 92 15 615 127,220 206.86
1835 142 23.7 338 56.2 121 21.2 601 181,187 301.48
1840 122 19.7 360 58.3 136 22 618 195,169 315.81
1845 120 18.2 406 61.6 133 20.2 659 227,306 344.93
1850 120 17.2 391 55.9 188 26.9 699 213,345 305.21
1855 107 15.7 378 55.4 197 28.9 682 179,217 262.78
1860 96 12.8 384 51.2 270 36 750 288,597 384.8
1865 76 9.2 394 47.8 355 43 825 277,757 336.68
1870 55 6 407 44.7 438 49.3 900 264,753 294.17
1875 52 6 391 44.8 430 49.2 873 235,596 269.87
Sources:
The British Brewing Industry 1830 - 1980 by T.R. Gourvish and R.G. Wilson, 1994, page 131.
Whitbread brewing log, document LMA/4453/D/09/023
"The British Brewing Industry, 1830-1980" T. R. Gourvish & R.G. Wilson, pages 610-611

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are the old Reid records something that would work for Lets Brews? Would they be interesting things for home brewers to take a stab at making? Or do they involve too much guess work to translate to the typical home setup?

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

there's a Reid IPA in the Home Brewer's Guide to British Beer. The records are reasonably detailed, so they're OK for translating into recipes.