Tamplins - Brighton's Biggest Brewery

Within one hour on 6th September 1820, the thatched-roofed Southwick Brewery, at that eponymous Sussex town, was consumed by flames. Owner, Richard Tamplin had only purchased the brewery from Nathaniel Hall earlier that same year and was uninsured for the loss of over £10,000. Yet within five months of this setback, Henry Padgen Tamplin, Richard’s eldest son had laid the foundation stone for the family’s new brewery behind the company’s registered office at Richmond Terrace, Brighton. Both this elegant terrace and the brewery were designed by father and son team, Amon and Amon Henry Wilds, architects responsible for some of the town’s finest Regency buildings.

Because this new venture had risen from the ashes of the old, albeit at a different place five miles to the east, the site at Albion Street and Waterloo Street site was called the Phoenix Brewery. It was to become not only Brighton’s biggest brewery but the largest in Sussex with an estate of some 600 pubs, stretching into Hampshire, Kent and Surrey. The biggest concentration, about a third, was in the Brighton area, which meant that by the early 1950s two out of every three pubs in and around the town were owned by Tamplins.

Richard Tamplin was born into a family of mercers on 14th January 1779 at Horsted Keynes to the north of the county. He moved to Brighton in 1811 and was reported to have set up a bank in Castle Square. Richard also brewed and held licensed premises at Worthing both before and subsequent to finding a permanent site at Brighton. Upon Richard’s death in September 1849 the brewery passed to Henry, born in 1801 and died on 16th December 1867 after a hunt meeting. It was Colonel William Cloves Tamplin (b. 1834), son of Henry and already a partner in the business at the time of his father’s death, who in May 1889 registered as a limited liability company Tamplin & Son’s Brewery, Brighton, Ltd, with its 83 hotels, licensed houses and beer houses at a purchase price of £265,000.

When the Colonel died of a heart attack on 26th July 1893 it was the end of the family name on the board of directors; but what was to become a policy of acquisitions had begun the previous March with the takeover of Marcellus P. Castle’s close-by Albion Brewery, Albion Street, with 35 houses. In 1899, 21 licensed houses were purchased from the West Street Brewery, Brighton. A year later the South Malling Steam Brewery, Lewes, with two houses was purchased from M. H. Bishop & Sons, and the Brighton Brewery, Osborne Street, Hove, with 12 houses was purchased from Richard Carey Weekes.

By 1902 the Phoenix Brewery site covered an area of 100,000 square feet with a workforce of 150 men; but its largest acquisitions were to come in the 1920s. At the start of that decade the Southdown & East Grinstead Breweries Ltd. leased its business with 93 houses to Tamplins with an outright purchase following on 27th March 1924. Two years later it was the turn of Kidd & Hotblack, Cannon Brewery, Russell Street, Brighton, with 52 licensed premises. 1928 saw Tamplins acquire two-thirds of the pubs of E. Robins, Anchor Brewery, Waterloo Street, Hove, and the following year 125 houses of Smithers & Sons Ltd. of Brighton and Portslade.

For the following twenty-five years the Brighton pub scene was subject to a duopoly of Tamplins and its local rival the Kemp Town Brewery. In 1955, Tamplins and Friary Holroyd Healey of Guildford famously divided between them the entire estate of Henty & Constable of Chichester, with the pubs ranked according to barrelage and the first pick decided by the cutting of a pack of cards. But two years previously Tamplins had themselves been acquired by the London brewers Watney, Combe, Reid and Co. Ltd. Although allowed to continue to trade as Tamplins until 1969, the writing was on the wall.

By the time a minor name change to the Tamplins Brewery Ltd was registered on 13th February 1962, the infamous Watneys Red Barrel, brewed at Mortlake, London, was being kegged at Brighton.

As the reformed Watney Mann (London & Home Counties), the last brew took place at the Phoenix Brewery on 28th November 1973. But this was not the end of the Tamplins name. When a few years later Watneys - themselves the brewing arm of leisure group Grand Metropolitan - revived real ale, their portfolio included a 1038° Tamplins Bitter, described in the 1982 Good Beer Guide as a “well-balanced brew”.

It was produced in East Anglia at the Norwich Brewery, but marketed for the south coast at the Phoenix Brewery, which in 1976 had become the subsidiary Watneys Southern Ltd. By 1982 the operation at Richmond Terrace was renamed the Phoenix Brewery Co Ltd, although the brewery building itself had been demolished some two years previously. As a non-brewing company, Phoenix controlled 400-500 pubs on the south coast, the large majority serving real ale from such independents as Gale’s and King & Barnes; but Tamplins Bitter was withdrawn in early 1986 following the closure of the Norwich Brewery the previous year. A metal phoenix rising with flame tipped wings can still be seen atop the standing signs of numerous pubs in Sussex that used to be under the control of this company, while the phoenix image on pub lanterns is an even more common survivor.

The Brighton premises were retained as a bottling plant and depot until a move to Lewes in 1991. The old Head Offices building at Richmond Terrace remains today as elegant as ever, while still standing in Phoenix Place is the redbrick office building with slate roof and phoenix pediment, designed by C. H. Buckman and completed in 1893.

Behind this is the Free Butt, the old brewery-tap, looking forlorn and no longer a pub but with Tamplin’s Entire on the stonework tablet over the front door. Just to the rear left of the Free Butt once stood the iron gates on stone pillars that marked the entrance to the Phoenix Brewery. New housing now covers most of the site. The Tamplins name with its phoenix trademark can still be found etched into the glass of pub windows, survivors of several decades, or on old prices lists displayed as memorabilia on walls. And even where the name itself does not appear, the motif of birds engraved into old window glass often denotes that such a pub was once part of the vast estate of Brighton’s biggest brewer.

Sources:

Askey, Derek (1978) Sussex Bottle Collectors Guide, Brighton: Kensington Press.

Barber, Norman (edited by Mike Brown and Ken Smith) (2005) A Century of British Brewers – plus: 1890-2004, Longfield, Kent: Brewery History Society.

Brodie’s Fabulous Beers

Saturday 3rd September found me at the King William IV pub in Leyton, East London for the second Brodie’s beer festival of this year. Brodie’s is perhaps the most idiosyncratic of the capital’s growing number of microbreweries. The King William IV (left) is the brewery-tap, a sprawling late-Victorian pub that houses the 5-barrel plant in the abutting stable block. The Brodie family were part partners in the Sweet William brewery that operated at this same venue for five years from 2000. Eight years later brother and sister team, James (pictured sitting) and Lizzie Brodie revived brewing at the pub, hence this particular festival being a 3rd birthday celebration.



Courtesy of the brewery’s eight fermenting vessels, up to forty Brodie’s beers (ten in the regular range) can be found on the twenty-four hand pumps at the pub during the course one of these festivals, at Easter and September, advertised appropriately as a “Bonanza” or “Bash”. Virtually every style has at some point been offered, for example, English Best (3.9%), Dragon Weiss (3.9%), London Lager (4.5%), Ginger (4.8%) and Triple (13.1%). The traditional often comes with a contemporary twist as in Mint Choc Chip Stout (4.7%), Peanut Butter Mild (3.1%) and Pina Colada Porter (4.2%). Full-on fruit and berry flavours abound - Summer Berry Brew (3.5%), Passion (3.8%) and Pomegranate Pale Ale (4.1%) - while low-level gravity beers like Citra (3.1%) can be as packed with flavour as those towards the upper end of the range such as the 8.8% Noisome Cru.

This sheer range and variety does lend the atmosphere of a jamboree to these occasions. As a summary exemplar of my experiences so far: my American Brown (4.8%) is served hazy with little or no head retention, while Sunshine (4.0%) sparkled crystal-clear in the glass with a tight collar of foam. Green Bullet (4.3%) and the 4.4% version of Blue I failed to finish and never intend to revisit, but the grapefruit-hit of a Pink Pride (3.4%) or Amarilla (4.2%) makes me want to spend the rest of the day drinking just this and nothing but this. And then there is the question of defining exactly what I have been drinking. Three different figures are given for the ABV of West Coast Common depending on whether I consult the pump clip (4.5%), the advert in the London Drinker (4.8%) or the photocopied list available at the bar (4.1%). Sometimes the names of the beers have subtly altered.  



None of this makes it an easy task for those, such as me, who like recording the beers they’ve sampled. But such quirkiness adds to the attraction of these occasions. Yer pays yer money, yer takes yer choice. And as all beers are £1.99 a pint regardless of ABV - ranging from the 2.7% Giddy Blonde to the 22.0% Elizabethan (although the latter is not served in pints) – this is not a great deal of money for such a big choice: 57 different Brodie’s beers so far for me, a figure depending on definition, of course, but a nice Heinz variety of a number nonetheless. Sixteen of the beers are usually on every weekend and I’m already looking forward to my next visit. Tasting notes can be found in the two sources listed below and the websites for the brewery and the pub: http://www.brodiesbeers.co.uk/ and http://www.williamthefourth.net/

Sources:

Cryne, Christine, (2011) ‘Brodie’s Grows Up’, London Drinker, Vol. 32, No. 6 (Dec/Jan), p. 23.

de Moor, Des, (2011) The CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs & Bars, St Albans: Campaign for Real Ale.

Serving Beer Better with Carbon Dioxide

"Today mine host serves better beer - and serves beer better with carbon dioxide instead of the old beer engine" is what this advertisement in the Brewers Guardian claimed near the start of the shiny-new, chromium-plated, forward-looking, to-hell-with-tradition, modernist decade that was the 1960s. How odd, then, that the bald-headed businessman sitting at the shiny-new, chromium-plated, forward-looking, to-hell-with-tradition, modernist bar that was Snow's in Piccadilly Circus doesn't exactly wear the expression of a man wholly enamoured with his half pint of Wm Youngers. And it's a disgracefully short measure.

Of course, despite this movement towards scientific efficiency that was 'improving' our methods of beer dispense, we could be assured that other traditional attitudes of that time were impervious to change. For an even less palatable flavour of post-war Britain, here's a link to an article about an incident that took place in that very same bar eight years previously http://archive.tribunemagazine.co.uk/article/15th-january-1954/1/no-drink-for-mr-murumbi

And it's not only about 'colour'. Our national consciousness is imbued with a casual Franco-phobia, no doubt as a legacy of our history of wars with that nation across the channel. But what did the French ever do to us to deserve such a fate as we dished out to them in 1962? From the same issue of the Brewers Guardian comes an article on "the continental travelling demonstration unit" that was designed to take the dreaded Watneys Red Barrel to the north of France. My copy of the 1974 Good Beer Guide advises us of this beer to "avoid like the plague". For those of you too young to remember Red Barrel, try this useful link: http://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/keg_bitter/watneys_red_barrel.html

As much an ersatz horror as the beer is the "attractive" interior of the demonstration unit. Although furnished in dark oak with hunting-scene tapestry and horse-brasses to represent a Tudor-style public house, it looks alarmingly like a bar in some Alpine ski-lodge. The single red barrel sitting on the top of the bar appears suitably  at home in this kitsch. Note the keg residing in the counter front cut-out. No wonder General de Gaulle vetoed Britain's application to join the Common Market the following year.

Anchor Springs IPA and L.A. Gold

These two gold nuggets from the Anchor Springs Brewery Co. can usually be found at the brewery-tap, the Crown, Littlehampton, West Sussex. L. A. Gold is the perfect summer-session ale, named after its golden colour and the colloquial pronunciation of Little ‘Ampton. L. A. Gold is brewed with amber and pale malt to an OG of 1039.5° and an ABV of 3.7%. Challenger is used for the bittering hop, Target for the complex middle and Cascade for the citrus end hit. A sweet initial taste leads into a clean, crisp mouthfeel and dry lingering finish.

The IPA on the bar today is not the same beer as the 4.7% Anchor Springs IPA from last summer. The 2011 Frank McCabe-brewed IPA is a much superior beer, light-gold in colour with an OG of 1042.5° OG and 4.0% ABV. This full-bodied ale is brewed with pale malt, Target hops for bittering, EKG then Cascade for aroma. An initial sweetness with light toffee flavours gives way to a distinct middle stage with a full malt mouthfeel then a dry, lingering hop finish.

Anchor Springs: a range of quality premium beers to suit different palates for the discerning drinker. http://www.thecrownlittlehampton.co.uk/

The Anchor, Ringmer, 2nd June 1838

For those of you wanting something a little different from the usual pub heritage or beer tasting notes so far found on this Blog, here is the tragic tale of Hannah Smith’s last ever evening of drinking, at the Anchor, Ringmer, East Sussex, 173 years ago. Much of what follows is taken from W. H. Johnson’s, very readable (2005) book, Sussex Murders.

In May of 1841 Superintendent Francis Fagan of the recently formed East Sussex Constabulary received an anonymous letter, cryptically hinting at the guilt of four men implicated in an incident at Ringmer nearly three years earlier. It had been early in the morning of 2nd June 1838 that itinerant peddler Hannah Devonshire, known as Hannah Smith, being the common-in-law wife of one William Smith, left her Lewes home with a pack of rags slung on her back and a basket of trinkets over her arm, ready for a day’s hawking of her wares at Ringmer. Not a great deal of selling had been done by 9am, the time she arrived at Elizabeth Stephens’ beer shop near Ringmer Green. There she gained a companion, General Washer, a 56-year old farm labourer with a quaint Christian name given after his father’s service in the militia.

Smith and Washer remained at the beer shop supping on beer and eels until around 2pm when they moved onto the Green Man. After another six hours or so of drinking they arrived at the Anchor where at some point they were joined in the taproom by three other men, all in their 20s, Charles Briggs, a labourer, Stephen Steadman, a whitesmith, and John Pockney, a blacksmith. The landlady of the Anchor, Ann Stanford, chose to close up at 11pm and enquired of Hannah Smith whether she was afraid of the road back to Lewes late at night. Smith replied that she had been on the road too many times to be afraid and, according to Stanford, appeared to depart steadily despite what had been a fourteen-hour drinking session. “No one will hurt me”, were Smith’s parting words.

Around 6am the next morning Hannah Smith was found in the pond behind the vicarage (pictured right) by John Gaston, gardener to the local curate. Gaston summoned help and a futile attempt was made to revive the retrieved body, including sending to the Anchor for brandy. This group of witnesses including Henry Weller, the parish constable, noted that a willow tree growing around the pond’s edge showed signs of damage and that the surrounding grass had been trampled, footmarks being clearly visible in the morning dew. Smith’s basket was discovered nearby but contained little of her wares – she had been too busy drinking to sell them so had most likely been robbed. After the news of the incident spread, General Washer was one of those who came to view the corpse lying by the pool. Smith’s body was then taken in a wheelbarrow and stored in the shed of the Briggs family – Charles Briggs had been one of the other men last seen with her.

Despite the obviously suspicious circumstances surrounding Smith’s death, the coroner’s inquest at the Anchor that same afternoon could only reach the open verdict of ‘found drowned’. There was in those days no such thing as a ‘crime scene investigation’ and the body had been only perfunctorily examined after it was clear there were no obvious marks of violence on the upper parts. The subsequent investigation, such as it was in the era before forensic science and professional policing, came to nothing, despite Steadman, one of the four men drinking with Smith on that fateful night, showing signs of guilt by departing the village very suddenly. Now nearly three years later, Pockney was another of the four to leave Ringmer in a hurry, no doubt panicked by Superintendent Fagan’s own enquiry, set in motion by that tip-off via the anonymous letter.

Fagan was no bumbling country amateur. After serving on the Bow Street Foot Patrol he’d been commissioned into the Metropolitan force as Inspector. During October 1841 Fagan arrested all four of Smith’s final night drinking companions. But with the accused having given their testimonies - often conflicting and contradictory, either non-committal or designed to attribute blame to others, sometimes retracted - it became clear at the trial on 3rd March 1842 that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the preferred changes of murder and larceny. The case against General Washer had already been dropped, while the judge directed the jury to exonerate Briggs on the basis that no prisoner could be convicted only on the evidence of his said accomplices, a point correct in law in those days.

Both Pockney and Steadman were found guilty of larceny and sentenced to two years and to eighteen months hard labour respectively. But they could consider themselves fortunate, for not only did they escape the more serious charge of assault, their same actions today could have seen them stand trial for rape. So what did happen on that evening of 2nd June? The testimonies are clear on the main points. After leaving the Anchor, the three young men had repeated ‘connections’ with Hannah Smith in the field above the pond. Pockney clamed he agreed this with her beforehand but Steadman suggested Smith to be so much in drink as to be unaware of the ‘assault on her person’ that was taking place. Either way, Smith remained insensible enough to be robbed of her basket of trinkets, the proceeds of which were divided up in the churchyard (pictured). The near empty basket was then returned to where she had passed out.

The inference is that Smith awoke in the field and, still deep in drink, slung her pack of rags back over her shoulder. Unbalanced by the weight, she staggered and slid down the slope into the pond, clutching desperately at the willow branches at the side before slipping below the surface of the eight-foot deep water. Or was it the case that the three men were so fearful of the consequences of their actions they pushed Smith into the pond to silence her for ever, trampling the grass and breaking the willow branches in the process?

Hannah Smith is buried in Ringmer churchyard. She was referred to by both General Washer and Stephen Steadman as ‘the old woman’. She was but 43 years old.

Sources:

Johnson, W. H. (2005) Sussex Murders, Stroud: Sutton Publishing.

Welcome to Brighton visitoruk.com, http://www.brightonuk.co.uk/historydetail.php?id=29700&f=Brighton (Accessed 12^th August 2011)

The Dorset, Brighton

This three-storey Georgian building had acquired its license by 1822. The ground floor bar boasts a fine raked counter, probably Edwardian, with pilasters and console brackets. There would once have been back fittings, possibly with a tall stillion but these have been stripped out and the good quality bar top is a replacement. At the rear of the servery by the access to the toilets is an office-like structure and screen with 1930s glasswork. Along the Upper Gardner Street side is a 1930s brick fireplace and what is now the opened-up restaurant room appears to have once been a separate property. There is a skylight with 1930s glasswork and an old, oddly positioned internal door. At both ends of the pub are attractive Art-Nouveau lincrusta dados.

The street-corner site was previously partitioned into a Public Bar, central Bottle & Jug Dept., and Private Bar, as can be seen from the names in the splendidly decorative set of etched glass doors and windows. A Bottle & Jug (often a Jug & Bottle or Off-Sales) was a small sectioned area of a pub with its own street entrance or hatch where beer could be purchased for consumption off the premises, the implication of the name being that customers brought their own bottles or jugs along to be filled. The Public Bar was the cheapest and most basic drinking room on any pub premises but Private Bar suggests a more exclusive area, restricted perhaps to a well-known set of regular patrons.

These old room divisions reflect markers of social status, so important in Victorian and Edwardian England, and external evidence for them can still be seen in a number of pubs once owned, like the Dorset, by the now-defunct Brighton-based brewery, Tamplin & Sons. Another clue to the past ownership of a pub by Tamplins is the sometimes appearance of a bird motif in the etched glasswork, usually of an external window. The type of bird varies, and far from all ex-Tamplins pubs bear this motif. Nonetheless, all but one of the pubs I have so far discovered to have this distinctive bird motif can be ascertained to have once been owned by Tamplins.

In the late 1920s, the Dorset was a “Vat” (a meeting place for gatherings) of the charitable organisation The Ancient Order of Froth Blowers (AOFB). The head of the Vat was often the relevant publican, and listed under the Dorset entry in a surviving AOFB membership booklet is Blower B. Edwards, ‘Blower’ being not a nickname but a rank within the order. The initial B may be a misprint because my own trawling through the Brighton voters lists from 1927-1933 turns up at this address a Herbert Henry Edwards and Katie Edwards. The AOFB was formally wound-up by the end of 1931 but not before attracting a worldwide membership of around 700,000 and raising more than £100,000 for children’s charities.

Rose Collis’s informative book Brighton Boozers  records that the Brighton Lesbian Group held socials here at the Dorset Arms on Sundays and Wednesdays in the early 1980s. Inquisitive regulars were told by the landlady Irene Shields that the group were the ‘Ladies Sports Club’! Having dropped the ‘Arms’ from its name, the Dorset is now a continental-style café bar with window blinds.

The Dorset, 28 North Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1YB http://www.thedorset.co.uk/

The Windmill, Littleworth

A History of the County of Sussex records that the Windmill existed in 1909 and possibly earlier and was the meeting of a ‘slate club’ in 1916. The Post Office Directory of 1878 lists a Felix Thomas, beer retailer of Littleworth. The only beer retailer at Littleworth in Kelly’s Directory of 1891, 1899 and 1905 is Thom. Knight, while Barton Snelling is listed as the only beer retailer in the village in the 1911 and 1915 editions. The tendency for beer houses (those without a spirits licence) to be listed in old directories under the proprietor’s name suggests that these entries are for the Windmill. The pub is almost certainly named after Jolesfield Windmill, an eight-sided tarred smock mill that stood in the village until the early 1960s. The pub exterior is in classic hung-tile Sussex style, while the present interior layout of small public bar at the front-left, small lounge to the rear-right and quarry tiled drinking passage between the two rooms has been like this for over 50 years.

The public bar has a rustic atmosphere with scrubbed tables, old agricultural relics, bar billiards table and dartboard. The comfortable lounge, in complete contrast, is tartan carpeted with upholstered seating and houses an appropriate collection of small windmills. The public bar serving hatch, lounge bar counter and brick fireplace, porch entrance, front windows and floor tiles in the passageway all date from an interwar refit. Back shelving is probably of the same period but with some post-war additions. Flagstone floors appear modern. The landlord, Hall and Woodhouse tenant Michael Lennon, has a photo from the late 1940s showing the matchwood panelling in the front bar just as it is today. The panelling exactly matches the design of the serving hatch counter front. The pub was previously in the ownership of the now-defunct King and Barnes brewery, Horsham, and their livery can be seen over the porch entrance.

The Windmill, Littleworth Lane, Littleworth, near Partridge Green, West Sussex, RH13 8EJ

Sources:

‘West Grinstead’, A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6 Part 2: Bramber Rape (North-Western Part) including Horsham (1986), pp. 83-89. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=18329 Date accessed: 10 August 2011.