"As the century neared its close, this golden age of the village and the village characters was crowded slowly but inexorably out. by the growth of the more mechanized and more impersonal age. The hens went, and the goats. The wheelwrights, the blacksmiths, and the farriers dwindled and disappeared. The tone of the nieghbourhood changed. Foreigners crowded in, immigrants from Russia and Poland, displacing the prosperous tradesmen, who moved further west.
Between the brewery and the earlier inhabitants of Mile End, honest beer drinkers and good neighbours, good fellowship flourished. They were proud of Charrington's: they knew the family: they cherished the brew. But the foreigners who took their place cared nothing for beer, and would most of them been too poor to buy it even if they had wanted to. From being the centre of the district, almost like a castle in feudal times, the brewery became an incident only, a large building that happened to be there."
The century it talks of is the 19th. Nothing new under the sun, eh?
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