Country Images Magazine May 2015 - North Edition | Page 37

This page left to right: The expensive pub tray. The price was high despite the slight pitting and oxidization.
A rarity: a Seven Stars pint mug (with imaginary coaching scene) made at the King Street China works prior to 1945.
Nickel plated 1950s half-pint mug, crudely lettered TOM FRITH/WINE VAULTS DERBY.
Inter-war Offilers’ ale bottle with moulded lettering and distinctive trade mark.

who had set up there earlier. They also took over from John Porter and
built a new facility on his Ashbourne Road site with a frontage to Surrey
Street which until 20 years ago when part of it burnt down, was Derby’s best
preserved brewing complex.
Stretton’s had 154 tied houses when they bought out Alton’s in January
1903, but both were run separately until 1922, when the Wardwick
operation closed. Taken over by Samuel Allsopp in 1927. Ironically, Lord
Hindlip, Allsopp’s proprietor, was a direct descendant of the Allsopp who
had built the house on The Wardwick. They closed the brewery in 1929 but
even so, the two Derby firms kept their identities a few years longer.
A final entry into the ranks of Derby breweries in the 19th century was
Offiler’s Vine Brewery. Like many landlords of that era, George Offiler
(1837-1899), licensee of the Vine, on the corner of Whitaker Street and
Corden Street, brewed his own beer, but after less than two years in Derby,
in 1877, began brewing a surplus and selling to neighbouring houses; in
1881 he employed three men. He was attended with remarkable success, and
in 1884 purchased the warehouse of the Star Tea Company, formerly the old
Ordnance Depot, on Normanton Road (built to the designs of James Wyatt
in 1806, but converted into a silk mill in the 1820s) and it was rebuilt as
the Vine Brewery. The architect, who mainly replaced Wyatt’s building, was
William Bradford of London and the tower principle was adopted.
By 1890, the year the company was registered, Offilers were producing
509,000 gallons of ale per annum. In that year the brewery owned the
following fourteen Derby pubs, five in Loughborough, six in Belper, two
in Whitwick (Leicestershire), one in Shepshed (Leicestershire), and 12
others scattered around the Southern Derbyshire area, making 40 outlets
altogether. Two years later the company re-formed and re-registered.
As it turned out, Offilers was the last independent brewer to survive in
Derby, latterly with 238 houses in the region, finally being taken ove "'