Like Truman document B/THB/C/256A. Which contains the output of a long list of London brewers. It kicks off with 1758 and 1760, then jumps to 1802. It's the 1758 list that really caught my eye. Dating as it does from the beginnings of the Porter boom.
The names you would expect are there: Whitbread, the two Calverts, Truman and, of course, Thrale (later to become Barclay Perkins). Sixteen brewers were knocking out more than 20,000 barrels annually. I was shocked to see that Thrale was only halfway down the list.
Even more surprising was the number of breweries in the list I'd never heard of. Including a couple - Hucks and Hope - who brewed more than Thrale. What happened to these breweries? Why did Whitbread, Truman, Barclay Perkins, Reid and Combe prosper and others sink without trace?
| Largest London brewers in 1758 | |
| Brewer | barrels |
| Whitbread | 64,588.75 |
| Calvert & Seward | 61,830.75 |
| Truman | 55,506.50 |
| Sir Wm. Calvert | 55,008 |
| Hope | 50,140.50 |
| Gyfford | 41,371.50 |
| Hucks | 35,672.50 |
| Thrale | 32,622.25 |
| Parsons | 31,698 |
| Harman | 30,776 |
| Dickinson | 28,433.50 |
| Collinson | 23,867.50 |
| Harwood | 21,235.50 |
| Chase | 20,323 |
| Godfrey | 20,174.50 |
| Hare | 20,170.50 |
| Source: | |
| Truman document held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/256A. | |
ITV3 is rerunning Inspector Morse at the moment and I've just watched the episode set in a traditional family-owned brewery. Lewis cracks the case by going to the county records office and trawling through documents about nineteenth century breweries and then accessing a database of defunct ones, while Morse is taking a CAMRAesque swipe at the boss of an industrial brewery, played by John Bird, which is trying to take them over.
ReplyDeleteI find it amusing they tracked the output down to the quarter barrel.
ReplyDeleteMatt,
ReplyDeleteany idea which brewery it was filmed in? Morrells would have been the obvious choice.
I think it was, yes. Morse and Lewis also go in a Morrells pub for a pint in the first episode of the series, The Dead of Jericho.
ReplyDeleteRadford's brewery is the old Brakspeare's Brewery in Henley-on-Thames. It should be similar to the Morrells Brewey as they both used Dropping Vessels iirc. The modern brewery (Farmers) is The Hertford Brewery (McMullens).
ReplyDelete