Old Family Brewers of Britain. Part Twelve - Truman's of East London

Without looking back through the archives, I’m not quite sure which number we’ve reached in the occasional series that takes a look back at the Old Family Brewers of Britain, but I’m guessing the forthcoming article is No. 12. As with Fremlin’s of Maidstone, East London brewers, Truman’s may well have started as a family enterprise, but just over 200 years from the founding of the latter company, it had grown to become the largest brewery in the world.

Truman's Brewery had its roots in the east-end of London and could trace its history back to the 17^th Century. Established in 1666, as the Black Eagle Brewery, on a plot of land next to Brick Lane in Spitalfields the company grew steadily under the management of Benjamin Truman. During the 18^th Century the company enjoyed a period of rapid expansion, driven by an almost insatiable demand for the beer known as porter, and become one of the largest brewers in London.

I am old enough to remember Truman’s Brewery, and first became aware of the company and its beers, during a school trip to London, for a visit to the Geological Museum in South Kensington. This would have been sometime around 1972-73. Like many sixth formers, we thought we were terribly grown up, so the idea of sneaking off for a pint or two seemed a good idea. Somewhere close to the museum, we found a pub and it belonged to Truman’s. This was not a brewery I was familiar with at the time because whilst the company owned many pubs in the capital, and also quite a few in north Kent, there were no Truman’s pubs in the east of the county where I grew up and went to school.

Although I can’t remember its name, I can still picture the pub because it was cosy and comfortable. It was around this time that Truman’s re-branded themselves, dropping the historic “Hanbury & Buxton” part of their title and becoming plain Truman’s. They also dropped the historic Eagle logo, based on the Black Eagle Brewery. Instead, the company made great play of their year of foundation, and 1666 appeared everywhere. Multi-coloured stripes appeared right round the outside of many pubs, along with a new stylised logo which was meant to represent a sheaf of barley.

For an impressionable teenager in love with modernity, this was cool and obviously the way forward, so I was highly impressed with what I found in this South Kensington pub. I liked the fact that it was carpeted throughout, and the fact the carpet was embellished with the new-look Truman’s logo. I also liked the fact that the pub was low-lit, in a fashionable and modern sort of way.  (I was only 17 at the time!).

 I mentioned earlier that Truman beers were not available in East Kent, but not long after that school trip, the company arrived in Ashford with a bang. The town was unfortunate to have been designated a London “over-spill” town, and several new housing estates sprang up on the outskirts of what had once been a very pleasant Kentish market town. The largest of these estates was called Stanhope, and despite the best intentions of the town planners, it turned out to be a rather unpleasant concrete jungle. Back in the 70’s, it was considered essential for estates like these to have their own local pub; and this is where Truman’s stepped in. A brand-new pub called the Ben Truman was constructed, right in the centre of the estate; the idea being it would act like a hub and draw the community together, In reality, it wasn’t exactly a place for the faint-hearted. The Ben Truman has subsequently been demolished and the estate largely re-built and re-modelled.

Returning to the Truman’s story, the company continued to grow into the 19^th Century, as manifested by the expansion of the brewery and the enlargement of the company’s pub estate, helped by the purchase in 1873, of Philips Brewery in Burton. For a while, Truman’s became the largest brewery in the world, but as the 20^th Century progressed, Truman's had to come to terms with the deprivations of two world wars, competition from cheap imports and the consolidation, through mergers and takeovers, of some of the biggest names in British brewing.  

The 1960's, in particular, proved to be very turbulent years for the British brewing industry, but sensing the mood, Truman’s restructured the entire business, closed their Burton brewery, rationalised their pub estate and invested heavily in improving the Brick Lane site. These measures had the desired effect as profits grew by a third in the last four years of the decade, and Truman's emerged as the last major independent brewery left in the capital. This happy situation failed to continue into the next decade, because in 1971 Truman's became the centre of a bidding war between hotels group Grand Metropolitan and Watney Mann. Grand Metropolitan eventually won and then immediately turned its attention to Watney Mann. After taking over Watney Mann, Grand Metropolitan merged the company with Truman's, and from then on, the company’s fortunes declined rapidly.

Grand Metropolitan made many changes to the company, including amending the name to Truman, creating a new brand, switching their draught beer from cask to keg, and reformulating the beer recipes. These decisions proved detrimental to the company, and when the pendulum swung back the other way, in favour of cask (Real Ale), with breweries falling over themselves to either promote existing cask brands or bring back long dead ones, Truman’s found themselves left behind.

Realising their mistakes, cask was gradually re-introduced, initially with Truman Tap Bitter, dispensed by the controversial “County Air Pump”; a device which came very close to splitting CAMRA. A few years later, Truman’s re-entered the cask ale market properly, with a range of well-regarded cask beers, which included a biter, best bitter, a strong ale and even a mild. To complete the picture, the Truman’s Eagle also made a comeback. Unfortunately, it was too little and too late, and despite the quality of the new cask beers, the damage has already been done. Sadly, the closure of the brewery was announced in 1989.

In 2010, two beer enthusiasts James Morgan, and Michael-George Hemus, purchased the Truman’s name from Scottish & Newcastle – the owners of the brand at the time. They then began the lengthy and difficult undertaking of re-establishing this highly respected London brewery. Unfortunately, despite some early successes the process ran into difficulties, caused partly by the COVID pandemic and subsequent lock-down. As far as I can make out, the undertaking is still unfolding, but whatever the case, it remains outside the scope of this article, particularly as we are looking at the original Truman Brewery, rather than its modern-day successors. For the curious, this excellent article by Des de Moor, contains all the gory details.