Saturday 18 October 2008

Huguenot

I'm slowly assembling a decent collection of London brewery histories. Watney, Charrington, Watney again, Courage, Mann. I've a few books on Whitbread, too.

"The Albion Brewery 1808-1858" was the last to plonk on the doormat. I started reading it in my sickbed earlier this week. It's the history of Mann, Crossman and Paulin. On the cover is a painting of the brewery for the mid-1800's. Including the Blind Beggar pub. It's one of the few large London breweries to have survived pretty much intact. There's still a pub called the Blind Beggar, too, though that was rebuilt in the late 19th century.

When I lived in the East End in the 1970's, I'm pretty sure it was still brewing. Though, being part of the Watney empire, it was all crap. I definitely drank in the Blind Beggar a couple of times. Though I'm struggling to remember why I visited it more than once. I've rarely found a pub more depressing and scary simultaneously.

But I digress. I've not got through much of the book yet. I'm still on the stuff about the Mann, Crossman and Paulin families. But I've already discovered one interesting fact. The Paulins were of Huguenot origin.

Why's that interesting? It's the third major London brewery I've found with a Huguenot connection, the others being Courage and Whitbread. Fascinating, eh? No wonder French beer was crap.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm not sure it's the reason for the generally uninspiring leel of Frnch beer...

But what's more or less established is that when Louis XIV did revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685, he lit the - admittedly long - fuse to the 1789 Revolution.
Huguenots were to convert, and were forbidden to leave France. But they did, in droves, first stop for most being Switzerland, Southern Germany, the Netherlands. Besides, those who left were the ones who could afford to. Very few peasants among them... mostly doctors, chemists, lawyers, printers, weavers, merchants etc. One could indeed assume there were brewers among them too.

Parts of France such as the region around Montpellier, or around La Rochelle, were, within 10 years, missing most of their craftsmen and trade just crashed, putting the economy of France as a whole in a pretty dire situation, which was never really taken care of...

Really the same story as Amin Dada expelling all people of Asian origin from Uganda back in 1972, just that the trade mechanisms were a bit slower back in the 18th century.

Cheers !

Laurent