When trouble was brewing

The taxi driver drops me right on the edge of town. Beyond a dry stone wall, horses are grazing in a steep field. The middle of Halifax seems a million miles away instead of just down the hill and it’s easy to see why Webster’s Brewery used this sylvan setting to brand its products for the world beyond the West Riding.

And why former technical services manager Paul Hulme, who lived and worked up here for much of his 34 years with the company, should feel so nostalgic about it.

“We brought up three kids here,” he says. “They loved it. I loved it. I really miss it. It was the nicest brewery in the country in terms of the view.”

Originally from Donegal, Paul was 20 when he joined the company in 1960, not long after the last of the dray horses had finally ceased clopping down the hill to Halifax.

By the time he left, in 1994, the independent family brewery founded by Samuel Webster in 1838 had been run first by Watney’s, then by Grand Metropolitan Hotels and finally by Courage. Still to come was Scottish and Newcastle, which closed Webster’s down in 1996.

“It was the year after £17m had been invested in the place,” says Paul. “We had the fastest bottling plant in Europe.”

About 180 people lost their jobs in a former mill town that has seen more than its fair share of compulsory redundancies. All that’s left today are the former maltings built in 1900 on the lines of a French château, and a listed building called the Long Can, 15th-century in parts, where Webster’s used to entertain clients.

At Webster’s there was always plenty of beer on offer as well. In fact, any visitor to the brewery would be offered beer, irrespective of the time.

“Even the postman got a pint,” Paul says. “He started delivering three times a day. We didn’t have tea breaks; we had beer breaks – two pints around 10 in the morning and another two around 10 to three in the afternoon. Heaven knows why. We finished at four any way.”

Paul reckons Black Sheep is the nearest thing on the market today to Webster’s Pennine Bitter which was later sacrificed on the altar of blandness to appeal to a mythical national palate. The story of the Halifax brewery is repeated up and down the country and across Yorkshire.

In Leeds, the unthinkable came to pass in 2006 when the last of the Tetley dray horses were finally put out to grass on a Pennine hillside just outside Huddersfield. There were three of them: Charles, Prince and Jonjo. Once there had been 120. That of course was in the days when Joshua Tetley was in his pomp.

Having acquired a brewery from one William Sykes for £400 in 1822, he began building what would become a Leeds institution. By 1860 it was already the biggest brewery in the north of England.

A century later Tetley’s owned more than 1,000 tied house in Yorkshire alone and more than double that number in country as a whole. Most received their deliveries by lorry. But the dray horses still clopped around Leeds city centre and they would for some years to come.

In 1971, the Yorkshire Evening Post received what was at the time its biggest postbag on any subject when the leader of the Leeds Corporation planning and management committee suggested that Tetley’s should limit the number of horse-drawn vehicles. The council had apparently received complaints from motorists about horse drays holding up the traffic. Thousands of indignant readers wrote in demanding that the horses should stay. The ban was abandoned.

Those magnificent beasts had been established as the pin-ups of Yorkshire. From the late 1960s to the turn of the century they appeared on calendars until Carlsberg, the dominant partner in what was by then Carlsberg-Tetley called time on the tradition.

It seemed a rather ungracious move in a year when the horses had come back to work with a will during the hauliers’ strike. But then what has sentiment got to do with business in the 21st-century?

In 2001, the really unthinkable happened. Carlsberg UK stopped brewing in Leeds and moved production elsewhere.

Some will never forgive the company for leaving. Peter Bagnall, drayman from 1966 to 1990 is looking at what’s left of the old brewery as the demolition men set about clearing the 22-acre site. Near the gates is a blue plaque to the memory of Joshua Tetley. The gates themselves are painted a shade of green rarely seen in nature and emblazoned with the name Carlsberg UK.

“I hate that sign,” says Peter. “As soon as it became Carlsberg-Tetley we could see what was going to happen.”

From a shoulder bag crammed with Tetley-ana he plucks a cutting from The Times. The headline reads: “Carlsberg may call time on Tetley site.” Next to it is a cartoon showing two executives looking at the brewery with the caption “Probably the best development site in the world.” The date on the cutting is significant: June 4, 2006. It was the year before the financial collapse and new apartments were still being squeezed into whatever space remained in the centre of cities like Leeds. The property boom was still in full swing. Now as the wrecking ball swings into the formidable structure of a one-time Leeds institution the future of the site is by no means certain.

As we walk towards the Adelphi pub, once the Tetley brewery tap, but now owned by Mitchell’s and Butler’s, draymen are delivering Carlsberg (presumably brewed in Northampton) to a city centre club. One of them is wearing a Tetley T-shirt as he tips a barrel off the side of the wagon and then rolls it across the pavement towards the doorway and beyond. It looks like hard work, but Peter confides: “Those are only 18-ers. We used to do barrels twice that size. Made of wood in the old days.”

There has been no shortage of debate on whether or not Tetley’s brewed in Wolverhampton tastes anything like Tetley’s brewed in Leeds. One man who should know is Dudley Mitchell, brewing manager who worked at the company from 1960 to 1999.

“Well, I’m still drinking it,” he says. “I think they’ve done a pretty good job in matching the water.”

And the ingredients? All he knows is that in his day, every effort was made to live up to the Tetley motto: Quality Pays.

“There was no paring back on the best barley, and we also bought the best hops from Kent and Worcestershire. When I left, it wasn’t Tetley’s any more. Carlsberg brought in a different breed of people, more structured and less paternalistic. It was very sad. When the horses went that was the end.”

The decline of Hull Brewery ran in parallel with the demise of the city’s fishing industry. Once the trawlermen were known as three-day millionaires thanks to frenzied weekends of shore leave.

Come Monday morning the cash in their briefly well-stocked pockets would have dwindled away in the many pubs on Hessle Road. They were nearly all owned by the same company, Hull Brewery’s mild was the trawlermen’s tipple of choice, dark and fruity with an ABV of just 3.3per cent.

It gushed down thirsty throats in some quantity, particularly during the 1950s and early 1960s.

The Star and Garter, otherwise known as Raynor’s after a local licensee, stood on the corner of Hessle Road and West Dock Avenue, braced for an invasion soon after the lock gates swung open to admit the first homecoming ship.

“The landlord would ensure that a hundred pints were laid out on the bar before he opened the door,” says Geoffrey Trueman, a former sales director of the brewery. “Don’t know whether the captain paid for the first round, but I do know that our dark mild was the beer in Hull. A pub like the Star and Garter would get through about 40 barrels a week.”

Geoffrey, now 83, was more of a bitter man himself. He joined the family company in 1950. His uncle, Charles Seymour-Cooper ran the brewery at the time with Bob Gleadow. They were known to the staff as Colonel Seymour-Cooper and Major Gleadow, a military title being almost obligatory for brewery executives in the post war years.

Gleadows had been involved with beer in Hull since 1796. That was the year that shipbuilder, Robert Gleadow, married Mary Ward, the daughter of Thomas Ward who had built the first brewery in the evocatively named Dagger Lane 14 years previously.

Twenty five years later, they were evidently turning out a hell of a lot of beer. A visitor from a journal called Modern Hull in 1893 described the fermenting department as containing 24 squares, each having capacity for 1,000 gallons.

So what happened to Hull Brewery in the 20th -entury?

Takeovers happened. First it swallowed up several competitors in the area and a few beyond. Its two main rivals in the city were taken over and closed down in the 1960s. In 1972 it was Hull Brewery’s turn to be taken over. By Northern Dairies of all companies.

“Perhaps one of their executives looked out of his window one day, saw our very tall chimney and thought they might deliver beer on milk floats,” reflects Geoffrey.

At least Northern Dairies kept the brewery brewing. It was only when Northern Foods, as the dairy had been rechristened sold HB to Mansfield Brewery in 1982 that closure loomed. The axe finally fell three years later.

“A lot of people were made redundant, including me,” says former maintenance man and painter John Mortimer. “The brewery had been part of the identity of the city. It was a bustling place employing whole families. If your dad worked there, you got a job.”

John’s dad was a Hull Brewery tenant, running three of their pubs at different times and he misses the camaraderie of the brewery paint shop.

“There were two other Johns there, so I was known as Sam.” And was there enough work for all these painters?

“Oh, aye.”

Keeping that huge fermenting room looking spick and span was apparently a bit like painting the Forth Bridge.

“For hygiene reasons it had to be done regularly,” says John, who eventually found another job decorating showrooms for MFI. “I still miss the mild,” he adds.

Britain’s Lost Breweries and Beers, by Chris Arnot, is published by Aurum Press on November 22, priced £25.

To order from the Yorkshire Post bookshop call 01748 821122.