Monday 19 November 2018

Beer zoning ends

Beer zoning - supplying tied houses from a closer rival brewery - ended after a little less than threee years in March 1946.

I'm sure that brewers were happy to be able to supply their own houses again. And drinkers must have been pleased to have a better choice of beer locally.

"BEER ZONING ENDS MARCH 2
Back to Favourite Brews

"Evening Post" Reporter
There is good news to-day for beer-drinkers — beer zoning will end on March 2.

From that date breweries and public-houses everywhere will resume rormal relations. Breweries will send supplies their own "tied" houses, and will supply "free" houses which were accustomed to take their beer.

Beer zoning came into operation August, 1943, and immediately attained Its object — that of economising road and rail transport. Brewery companies arranged among themselves districts which each could supply with the minimum use transport. One company's licensed houses in a town some distance from their brewery would be taken over en bloc by another firm better placed geographically.

For instance, zoning dealt effectively if somewhat arbitrarily, with Tadcaster beers, which were sent to Bradford, and Bradford beers, which were supplied to Leeds. That situation was dealt with by diverting the Tadcaster beers to the houses of the Bradford firm in Leeds, and the Bradford firm took over the Bradford houses which had been supplied with Tadcaster beer."
Yorkshire Evening Post - Wednesday 23 January 1946, page 5.

It seems that beer zoning wasn't always that logical.The brewery chosen as a replacement supplier wasn't necessarily the closest.

For those who don't know the geography of Yorkshire well, Tadcaster is about 25 km Northeast of Leeds, while Bradford is 10 km due West of Leeds.

Tadcaster is a small town that was home then to three substantial breweries: John Smiths, Sam Smiths and the Tower Brewery. Surprisingly, all are still in operation. Leeds, obviously had Tetley, but also Melbourne. And in Bradford there was Hammonds and Heys. All had substantial tied states.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ron ,
I believe that the Tadcaster Tower Brewery (Owned by Hammond`s United Breweries from 1946) was totally demolished in the 1960`s ,with a new brewhouse block being built , which is the one still in operation today .
Cheers ,
Edd