Country Images Magazine May 2015 - North Edition | Page 36

Derbyshire Antiques
by Maxwell Craven

Derby Brewery
Memorabilia
Derby was renowned throughout the Kingdom for
the quality of its beer, long before Burton-uponTrent overtook it. ‘The principal trade,’ wrote William
Woolley in 1713, ‘is that of malting, with which many
good estates have been raised.’ Twenty years earlier,
Fuller had written,
‘Never was the wine of Falernum better known to
the Romans than the Canary (Ale) of Derby to the
English.’
To which we might add the words of his contemporary
Charles Cotton (1630-1687):
‘Nay, I am for the Country liquor, Derbyshire Ale, if
you please; for a man should not, methinks come
from London to drink wine in the Peak.’
Derby malt was being exported to London in the 1730s,
and Thomas Cox said of it:
‘This drink is made here in such perfection, that
wine must be very good to deserve a preference.’

I

n 1577, Thomas Alsop and Robert Stringer are listed as vintners, but
no brewers appear, although they undoubtedly existed, if only amongst
the innkeepers. Indeed, Alsop was the ancestor of a long line of such,
operating from a stone house (with malthouse and brewery behind) in The
Wardwick, opposite St James’s Bridge. In 1708 this house was replaced by
the elegant Queen Anne building which is today the Wardwick Tavern; a
few fragments of the previous building can still be seen embedded in the
fabric.
The Alsops transferred the business to John Lowe, another maltster who
may have been a kinsman. The Lowes switched from malting to brewing and
supplying ale to local outlets and John Lowe’s son, Thomas, greatly expanded
the Wardwick Brewery and became very opulent in the process, serving as
Mayor of Derby four times before his death in 1831. His son Charles sold
out to Moreton Charles Wedge in 1837.
The other brewers in Derby at the start of the 19th century included the
Ash Close Brewery of 1804, near the north end of the Duffield Road,
Wheeldon’s Navigation Brewery, Nottingham Road, 1830 and Gisborne &
Watson of Friar Gate. They were joined in healthy competition by Henry
Hunt (the Derby Brewery, also Nottingham Road, 1835, Washington
Pike, ironically the son of a notable Baptist minister who set up in Parker
Street and John Porter’s Manchester Brewery with its workers’ cottages in
Manchester Street behind the brewery in Ashbourne Road founded 1835.

34 | CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk

Above: Attractive
poster for Offiler’s
from the immediate
post-war period.
Right: Advertisement
for Alton’s from
1891.

Nothing stands still for long, though. By the 1850s, Hunt had been taken
over by David Paine, but Pike, Porter and Watson flourished. Of these
three, Pike continued until the late 1870s when he and his son, Baxter Pike,
closed down and took the franchise to run the GNR’s Friar Gate station
refreshments rooms from 1877; Porter was bought out by Stretton’s in 1865,
and Watson survived a decade more on Uttoxeter New Road. David Paine,
in his turn, was taken over by L.W. Reynolds c.1860 and he was shortly
afterwards (in 1871) bought out by Alderman Thomas Clarke (1814-1877)
Mayor of Derby in 1862-3. He and his eldest son were maltsters but had
taken over Hunt’s Derby Brewery by 1874. The Derby Brewery Company
was the first local brewery to install the telephone, in 1891. They had over
57 tied houses when taken over by Stretton’s in 1899.
In 1869, ex-landlord William Alton bought out M.C. Wedge of the
Wardwick Brewery and expanded it further with his partner, Edward
Barnett, who subsequently took the business over, taking into partnership
not only Alton’s nephew (and adopted son), Hepworth Tropolet Tijou,
later Alton, but also solicitor George d’Arcy Clark and Arthur Walkden.
The company was registered in 1888. Like Bass at Burton, they brewed on
the Union system and were also maltsters. By 1899 they owned 91 licensed
outlets in the area.
Another newcomer was Stretton’s, established in Ashbourne Road in 1865
by taking over Sarah Eyre (1821-1863) daughter of Elijah Eyre (1799-1863)