Humphrey Smith obituary: The controversial recluse who owned Yorkshire's oldest brewery
Humphrey Smith, who has died at 81, was chairman and owner of Yorkshire’s oldest brewery and one of the largest independent family-owned pub operations in the country.
A reclusive traditionalist and a controversial figure in the brewing industry, he had run the Samuel Smith Old Brewery in Tadcaster since 1963, when he was 18.
His establishments were famous for not allowing swearing, laptops or mobile phones.
The company boasted that its 200 pubs were “havens from the digital world”, free of TVs or background music.
Despite being rarely seen in public, Mr Smith gained a reputation for turning up at pubs and enforcing his idiosyncratic culture among his customers, sometimes ordering them to leave forthwith.
He was also known for dismissing tenants he believed to be flouting his rules. As a result, many Samuel Smith pubs are currently vacant. Some have been shuttered for years.
The brewery was founded in 1758 and still uses traditional dray horses and carts for some of its deliveries.
It owns a large number of buildings in Tadcaster, as well as swathes of land both in and surrounding the town.
Mr Smith lived frugally in a small part of Oxton Hall, a Grade II listed house just outside the town. It had been acquired by his grandfather, Samuel Smith, in 1919 and once included a pigeon house and croquet lawn.
Humphrey’s wealth could only be guessed at, but he was reportedly one of the richest men in Britain.
A native of Tadcaster, he was educated at Eton before joining his father, Geoffrey, in the family business.
Geoffrey died soon afterwards of a sudden heart attack and for a few years, the brewery was managed by executors and solicitors before Humphrey and his younger brother Oliver gradually assumed control, taking full charge by the early 1980s.
Humphrey’s philanthropic contributions included funding the Tadcaster Community Swimming Pool, which opened in 1994 on brewery land.
But he was a divisive figure in the town, where some of the brewery’s properties remain unoccupied – a situation that has contributed to the decline of the high street, according to some critics.
The company has also come under attack by trade unions for its treatment of managers.
Smith was a conservative Christian whose beliefs – he opposed divorce and premarital sex – were said to be influenced by his maternal grandfather, a former Bishop of Selby.
He and his wife Julia had two children, Maude and Samuel.