Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2010/January 2011 | Page 62

feature

Island Life - December 2010

Photos: Above: The "4X" or the "XXXX" was used to deliver Mews Ales
to the mainland. Top Right: Two old salts whose names have faded from
memory. Dray horses apparently have now been made obsolete. Right: The
Brewery pictured during the great flood of 1960.

The Season of Good Cheer
In times past, ordinary Islanders celebrated Christmas not with
champagne, or wine, but with Mew Langton’s beer.
The heart of Newport has long
been connected with brewing. The
convenient meeting of the Lukely Brook
with the River Medina meant that
brewers had a ready supply of water
and could bring in barley by river and
send out barrels of beer by boat. At its
height the Mew Langton Brewery was
shipping beer to the mainland, China,
India and the Mediterranean.
The name “Meulx” was present on
the Island at the time of the Domesday
book but the first confirmed link with a
Newport brewery is about 1814 when
Benjamin Mew and his partner James
Cull operated their business in Crocker
Street. At the time the island had a
captive supply of customers at the local
garrisons. The business flourished.
Benjamin Mew had an extensive family
to support. Buying up small breweries
he despatched his eldest son Henry to
run his brewing business in Lymington
while his son Tom took over the Bugle
Inn in Newport. Brother Richard farmed
62

at Whitefairlee on the road to Ryde,
providing the Bugle with fresh garden
produce.
The youngest boy, Fred, had been
shipped off to London to study
architecture where he married
Anna-Maria Cubitt, niece of the builder
who constructed Osborne House.
Anna-Maria spent a lifetime feeling that
she had married beneath her and of her
children both the eldest son Henry and
youngest daughter Freda spent their
adult lives in an asylum. Their sister
Charlotte became a poet of renown.
It was William Baron Mew who was
the most dynamic of Benjamin’s sons
however and on Benjamin’s death, it
was to William that he left the Crocker
Street Brewery, assisted in its running
by his younger brother Joseph.
Tom Mew, inheriting the brewery at
Lymington was a passionate sportsman
and when William offered to buy him
out he readily agreed. Tom settled
at Walhampton on the outskirts

of Lymington to enjoy his outdoor
pursuits.
In 1850 the business had a boost
when it was commissioned to supply
ale to Queen Victoria when in residence
at Osborne House. The addition of “by
Royal Appointment” now graced their
letterheads and the brewery added
Royal to its name.
In 1854 William Baron married Frances
Mary Templeman, daughter of an
attorney at Crewkerne in Somerset.
Over the next six years they had three
daughters and two sons and then at the
age of 25, Frances died. William threw
himself into work and by 1871, the
brewery was employing 65 hands.
To fund its expansion, in 1873 along
came Walter Langton, a London timber
merchant of some wealth who was
happy to invest £20,000 and to settle
with his wife Letitia in his new home at
Gatcombe House and enjoy the profits.
At its height, the company owned 53
pubs in Newport alone.
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