Tied estates in 1977

I was slightly frustrated by the lack of detail about pubs owned by non-Big Six breweries in my recent posts. Then I remembered that the Good Beer Guide usually mentioned how many tied houses a brewery had.

Time to trawl through my 1978 Good Beer Guide to extract the numbers. Which is reasonably doable as there were far fewer breweries back then.

The results are quite interesting. Though for the Big Six, the numbers are way wrong because not all of the brewery entries contained numbers of tied pubs. The real total was over 35,000.

However, for independent breweries, the numbers are fairly complete. I wouldn't claim that they were 100% accurate, as breweries were constantly buying, selling or closing pubs. But they give a resonable overview of the size and number of tied estates.

The number of quite large estates - those of 500 pubs or more - is surprisingly large at seven. While a further 18 were between 200 and 500 pubs and another 18 between 100 and 200 pubs. 43 estates were over 100 pubs and 42 below 100. Not sure what that tells us, but it's good to know.

If you compare this table with the one from 2017 I published a few days ago, you'll see that some brewery estates have grown, while others have shrunk. Fullers have trebled the size of their estate, while Greene King's has expanded almost fourfold. Bateman's however, has been more than halved. I would guess that this is the result of rural closures rather than sales.

The biggest loser, however, is Camerons down from 600 pubs to just 58. Donnington appears totally unchanged, having 17 pubs in both lists. I wonder if they are the same 17 pubs?

Tied estates in 1977
Brewery	independent	Big Six
Adnams	72
All Nations	1
Alnwick	20
Ansells		2,400
Arkell	64
Banks's	770
Bass Charrington (Tadcaster)		1,000
Bass Worthington
Bateman	110
Batham	8
Belhaven	25
Blackawton	0
Blue Anchor	1
Boddingtons	270
Border	200
Brain	100
Brakspear	130
Matthew Brown	600
Buckley	180
Burt	11
Burtonwood	300
Cameron	700
Carlsberg	0
Castletown	36
Charrington
Courage
Crown	350
Darley	88
Davenports	110
Devenish (Redruth)	200
Devenish (Weymouth)	190
Donnington	17
Drybrough
Eldridge Pope	180
Eldgood	58
Everards	134
Felinfoel	80
Fuller	110
Gale	102
Gibbs Mew	56
Godson	0
Gray	51
Greenall Whitley	1,450
Greene King	850
Greenwoods	0
Guernsey	50
Guinness	2
Hall & Woodhouse	162
Hardy & Hansons	200
Hartleys	58
Harvey	24
Higsons	158
Holden	11
Holt	80
Home	400
Hook Norton	34
Hoskins	1
Hull	210
Hydes	50
Jennings	90
King & Barnes	59
Lees	150
Litchborough	0
Lorimer	205
McEwan
Maclay	25
McMullen	170
Mansfield	200
Marston's	600
Melbourne	32
Mitchells	47
M & B		2,000
Morland	220
Newcastle		712
New Fermor Arms	1
Northern Clubs	0
Okell	70
Oldham	100
Old Swan	2
Paine	24
Palmer	70
Pollard	0
Randall (St. Hellier)	28
Randall (Guernsey)	18
Rayment	25
Robinson	318
Ruddle	36
St. Austell	132
Selby	1
Shepherd Neame	234
Shipstone	250
Simpkiss	16
Smiles	0
John Smith		1,600
Sam Smith	200
Timothy Taylor	28
Tennent (Edinburgh)
Tennent (Glasgow)
Tetley		1,100
Tetley Walker		1,100
Theakson	6
John Thompson	1
Three Tuns	1
Thwaites	380
Tolly Cobbold	360
Traquair House	0
Truman		900
Usher		688
Vaux	510
Wasworth	143
Ward	96
Watney		1,600
Webster		288
Charles Wells	265
Welsh Brewers		605
Westcrown	0
Wilsons		720
Yates & Jackson	43
York	0
Young	135
Total	14,355	14,713
Source:
Good Beer Guide 1978

No. tied houses	No. estates
> 500	7
200 - 500	18
100 - 200	18
50 - 100	16
20 - 50	15
< 20	15