| Related Links |
| The Midland Pub Guide has an excellent feature on Burton, with a virtual tour of many of the town's brewing landmarks... |
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| The name of Burton-on-Trent is synonomous throughout the world with the production of beer, with a brewing heritage stretching back to the middle ages... |
| The monks of
Burton Abbey, established circa 1002 AD, were the first to discover how
peculiarly well-suited the local water was for the brewing of ales. Although
it wasn't until centuries later that the chemical reasons for this suitablity
were properly understood, the quality of the water drawn from Burton wells
was to inspire an industry which would transform a sleepy Staffordshire backwater
into the hub of an industry which would carry the name of the town to the
four corners of the globe.
Many inns had been established to accomodate travellers to the Abbey, which housed a shrine to St Modwen, an Irish nun who founded a church on an Island in the River Trent at Burton in the 7th Century, and after the dissolution of the Monastries in 1539, these local inns carried on the production of beer on a small scale. |
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Brewing as a commercial
enterprise didn't begin until the 18th Century, with Benjamin Printon the
first recorded common, or commercial, brewer in the town, founding a brewery
close to Burton Bridge in 1708.
Burton's fledgling brewing industry was boosted by the Trent Navigation Act of 1712, which made the river navigable for trade as far as Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, and later the arrival of the canals, and it was overseas where Burton ales first began to make a name for themselves, as local companies began to exploit a lucrative trade route to the Baltic ports and Russia, via Hull. The likes of John Worthington (1774) and William Bass (1777) soon followed, opening breweries producing beers which would become household names, and with the arrival of the railways (the main Derby-Birmingham line passing through Burton opened in 1839) Burton's brewing industry, and the town along with it, began to expand at a rapid rate. |
| Bass's brewery alone,
a single small brewery off Burton's High Street when William Bass inherited
it in 1777, had in the space of one century been transformed into the largest
ale brewery in the world, with three breweries in the town, a workforce of
more than 2,500, and an output of nearly a million barrels a year by the
late 1880's.
That company's expansion owed much to the success of a new kind of ale, pale, sparkling and bitter, which became known as India Pale Ale because of it's popularity for export to India and other British colonies. So renowned was Burton's superior quality water that brewers from around the UK began to set up operations in the town. Ind Coope & Co, a Romford-based brewery, arrived in the town in 1856, and had soon become the town's third largest brewer, later merging with it's neighbour, Allsopp's, the first Burton brewer to export pale ale to India in 1822. To improve transport links, the larger brewers in Burton began to set up their own railway systems which carried the raw materials for the brewing process in and the finished product, in barrels and bottles, out. |
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Bass owned the largest
private railway network in the country, with 16 miles of track for it's sole
use, and the brewery railways which, with the help of a series of level
crossings, criss-crossed the town, were a unique and distinctive part of
the townscape until the late 1960's.
This was the golden age of brewing in Burton. More than 30 breweries operated in the town, producing between them a staggering 3 million barrels of beer at the height of production in 1888. But this was to be the high-water mark of brewing activity in the town, as one by one breweries merged or closed down. |
| Bass merged with
Worthington in 1927, Ind Coope and Allsopp became one seven years later.
Marston's had merged with John Thompson & Son in 1898, and moved to the
Albion brewery in Shobnall, where to this day it carries on some of the
traditional brewing practices upon which Burton's reputation for high quality
ale was built, it's renowned Pedigree bitter still brewed using the famous
Burton Union system which was once widely used in the town but was discarded
by Bass in the 1960's.
With Truman's brewery in Derby Street yet another casualty of the 60's, for many years the twin goliaths of Bass and Ind Coope existed cheek by jowl, before the latter, after becoming part of Allied Breweries and later Carlsberg Tetley, sold it's plant to Bass, thus creating a new 'super-brewery' in the heart of the town. |
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With the dawn of a new century, what would have seemed unthinkable to William Bass and his ancestors, happened, and Bass plc announced it was to sell off all it's interests in brewing to concentrate on it's hotel and leisure interests. The future of the industry to which Burton owes it's very existence has never been more uncertain. A proposed takeover of Bass by Belgian firm Interbrew was blocked by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, and it's destiny remains unresolved at time of writing. The future of Marston's, now owned by Wolverhampton & Dudley, remains equally cloudy. The failure of Pubmaster's takeover bid for W&DB was widely seen as good news, although no-one at Marston's will be celebrating, with a new round of job cuts which have become increasingly common in recent times announced, along with the closure of the distribution centre in Burton. |
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Amidst all this corporate
manoeuvering which has more to do with share prices than the production of
beer, the flame of real ale brewing is kept alive by an emerging independent
brewing scene in the town.
Bass's Museum Brewery is one, the Tower and Cottage Breweries are the two most recent additions, but the best established of them all is the Burton Bridge Brewery. Founded in 1982 at the former Fox & Goose public house, the Bridge has earned deserved praise for the quality of it's ales, and the traditional ambience and hospitality of it's premises near Burton Bridge. The Bridge Brewery now also owns three other pubs - the Devonshire Arms in Station Street, and the Alfred in Derby Street and the Great Northern in Wetmore Road, ensuring that whatever fate the vagaries of the stock market and the cut-throat world of modern business may inflict on it's chief industry, traditional, high quality ale will continue to be produced in the town which, whether accurate or not, will continue to think of itself as 'Brewing Capital of Britain.' |
We'd like to acknowledge the help of the Bass Museum, Burton-on-Trent, for their help in compiling this feature, and for the use of some of the pictures used here - visit their website... Since this page was first published, Bass PLC has been sold to Coors Brewers and the Bass Museum has changed it's name, now being known as Coors Visitor Centre and The Museum of Brewing. |
