Brewing themselves out of business

Before we finish with Faversham, there’s one last area I want to talk about, and it’s one that is particularly relevant to the recent brewery closure announcement that has come from Danish brewing giant, Carlsberg. If you haven’t been sleeping these past few weeks, you will be aware that the brewer of what many would regard as “the worst lager in the world”, are looking to close the historic Marston’s Brewery, in Burton-on-Trent. The closure is scheduled to take place next summer with the Danes citing falling demand for cask beer, within the UK market.

Faversham represents a much smaller version of Burton, although the same principles apply. Fortunately, Shepherd Neame, who are the UK’s oldest surviving brewery, continue to brew in the town, even though I have to say their beers are not my favourite. Thirty-five years ago, there was about another brewery in Faversham, literally just across the road from Shepherd Neame’s Court Street premises. This substantial enterprise was the former home of George Beer & Rigden Ltd whose beers were marketed throughout the county, under the well-known “Kent’s Best" branding.

Few drinkers today, will have heard of the company, although they may well remember the company who bought them out.  This was Maidstone-based, Fremlin’s Ltd, whose “Elephant Brand Ales” were a familiar sight to Kentish drinkers. Up until the last quarter of the 20^th century, Fremlin’s were also the largest brewery in Kent, particularly in terms of number of pubs owned – roughly 700 pubs, at their peak, but in 1967, Whitbread acquired a controlling interest in the company. Five years later, in 1972, brewing operations at Maidstone ceased, and whilst the site continued as a distribution centre, all production was moved to Faversham.

Brewing continued at Court Street until 1990, when production ceased, but I can remember a couple of visits to the brewery, as part of a local CAMRA party, back in the 1980’s. The facility was very much alive and kicking back then, turning out Fremlin’s Bitter (marketed initially as Trophy Bitter, before the Fremlin’s name was re-instated). For a while, during that period, a stronger, and full-bodied bitter, called Tusker, was produced, the beer being named after Fremlin’s famous elephant mascot.

I was intrigued, and delighted last week, to discover that most of the Court Street Brewery buildings are still standing, and deservedly so, as they represent an attractive group of late Victorian industrial buildings, and whilst most have been re-purposed for a variety of other purposes, they form a reminder of what was once one of Kent’s largest brewery companies. 

One of the buildings is now home to a large Tesco Superstore, and I’m kicking myself now for not venturing inside, for a quick look. The truth was I was running on a tight time schedule, having promised Mrs PBT’s that I’d be back in time for tea. (That didn’t work, due to a couple of late running trains, and I’m still not sure whether she believed me!) However, this error on my part, doesn’t preclude a return visit, and the "trouble & strife" can accompany next time, having expressed an interest in this over-sized Tesco.

Now I've gone a little off-piste here, but what I am really trying to convey is the sheer physical scale of breweries such as Beer & Rigden at Faversham, which itself reflects on the volume of beer produced a century or so ago. The same was true of Fremlin's in Maidstone, whose brewery occupied a substantial site in the heart of the county town, overlooking the river Medway. These sites were not just collections of buildings; they were industrial complexes, dominating their local landscapes and providing employment for generations.

Going back a little further, Maidstone was once home to another brewing giant. The premises of Style & Winch stood close to the river and were every bit as imposing as Fremlin's. Following the takeover by London brewers Barclay Perkins, brewing continued at Maidstone for many years, surviving even after the formation of Courage & Barclay. I can just about remember the brewery in operation. During a visit to Maidstone with a school friend, we ventured into the Seven Grays, a now long-demolished riverside pub that stood close to the brewery. It was a Courage house, notable at the time for serving cask beer, something of a rarity within the Courage estate. Today, the entire area has vanished beneath road improvements and a new bridge across the Medway, leaving little trace of the brewing industry that once dominated this part of town.

The point, though, is not simply one of nostalgia. Looking at old photographs of breweries such as Beer & Rigden, Fremlin's, or Style & Winch, one cannot help but wonder just how much beer these vast establishments were capable of producing. Their footprints covered acres, with brewhouses, maltings, cooperages, stores and bottling plants stretching across town-centre sites that would be almost unthinkable today. The same logic applies when considering famous brewing centres such as Burton upon Trent. Burton's success left it with an enormous concentration of brewing capacity, much of it built to satisfy levels of demand that no longer exist. Beer consumption in Britain has fallen dramatically over the past half-century, leaving the industry with far more production capacity than the modern market requires.

Whilst hard figures are often difficult to come by, this surplus capacity goes some way towards explaining why historic sites have continued to close. Marston's decision to cease brewing at its historic Shobnall Road brewery is one example. Yet the major brewers hardly helped themselves during the 1970s and 1980s, when they invested heavily in a new generation of highly automated "mega-breweries".

These enormous beer factories were frequently constructed close to motorway networks to simplify distribution. Courage built the vast Worton Grange brewery overlooking the M4 near Reading. Whitbread opened large-scale plants at Salmesbury, near Preston and the M6, and at Magor in South Wales. Bass, meanwhile, developed its notorious brewery at Runcorn. The inevitable consequence was the closure of many older breweries, often bearing famous local names and producing well-known regional beers.

None of this is intended as an excuse for the actions of multinational brewing groups or the asset-stripping that sometimes followed. However, it does help explain the commercial pressures that drove many of the decisions. By the late twentieth century, Britain possessed far more brewery capacity than it needed, and once production became concentrated in a handful of modern super-breweries, the fate of many historic sites was effectively sealed.

I think the strongest point here is that the closure of breweries such as Beer & Rigden was not purely the result of corporate greed. There was also a genuine overcapacity problem. A useful comparison might be that Britain in the 1950's and 1960's was still geared to supplying a nation drinking over twice as much beer per head as it does today. When consumption began its long decline, something had to give, and unfortunately, it was often the older town-centre breweries that paid the price.