Decorative Ceramics in the Buildings of the British Brewing Industry
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Decorative ceramics in the buildings of the British brewing industry Lynn Pearson Ceramics have long been an integral part houses. Even in country house brew- of the structures of the brewing industry. houses, which sometimes reached the From perforated ceramic malt kiln tiles to size of the later commercial breweries, entire ceramic facades of both pubs and tiles are notable by their absence. In con- breweries, many types of tile, architectur- trast, the use of fashionable Dutch tiles in al ceramic and glazed brick have been the British eighteenth-century country used internally and externally throughout house dairy has been well documented; it the industry. Until recently, however, seems the lady of the house might be there had been hardly any systematic expected to take an interest in the deli- investigation of the pattern of use of cate workings of the dairy but not in the ceramics within the brewing industry. more steamy, smelly activities of the This paper considers the relationship brewhouse (or its frequent neighbour, the between the ceramics and brewing laundry).1 industries by taking a chronological approach to the use of ceramic materials Decorative ceramics, then, appear to be for specific functions in the brewery and solely a feature of commercial, large- the public house, and attempts to scale brewing and retailing. The industri- describe the interconnections between alisation of the brewing industry was well brewing and ceramics firms. advanced in London by the mid eigh- teenth century, and the first recorded use of ceramics in this new industry occurred, Brewing industry buildings up to 1870 not surprisingly, in London, where early eighteenth-century delftware manufactur- The predecessors of the industrial-scale ers produced pictorial tiled panels for use breweries were small-scale brewhouses as inn signs. These signs appear to have which could be found throughout the been sited externally, and a surviving country in farmsteads, cottages, monas- panel showing a cock and bottle is teries and other domestic environments thought to have been connected with the up to the eighteenth century. Despite eponymous inn on London's Cannon their ubiquity there is, however, no evi- Street.2 dence of any use of tiles in these brew- Brewery History Number 124/5 63 The brewer's house, potentially with a 1850, when The Builder reported that the number of tiled fireplaces, had always billiard room of Gurton's tavern, in been an integral part of the industrial London's Old Bond Street, had been dec- brewery. Two fire surrounds, complete orated with tiled pictures of appropriate with delftware tiles, can still be seen subjects including 'Bacchus and Ariadne'; today at what is now the brewery tap of they were said to be 'not without merit'.3 Tolly Cobbold's Cliff Brewery, Ipswich. The manufacturer may have been This distinctive little building dates from Doulton of Lambeth, a firm which built up soon after 1746 and used to be known as a strong association with the licensed Cliff House; it was once the home of the trade from the mid nineteenth century. Cobbold family. The fire surrounds are Thus by the mid nineteenth century, dec- undated, but could be contemporary with orative ceramics had been recorded the original building. It is almost certain inside and outside the tavern, but only that other brewer's houses of this period, externally at the brewery itself, apart from for instance at Wethered's in Marlow, the special case of the brewer's house, a would have contained similar fire sur- rather more domestic environment than rounds, but their fate is unknown. the brewhouse and associated struc- tures. There is no evidence of the use of wall or floor tiles inside the brewing areas of the early industrialised breweries, but the The brewery 1870-1914 best-known piece of ceramic decoration on the exterior of an early brewery build- The amount of brewery construction ing is the splendid Coade stone lion began to grow in pace during the 1860s, which stood above the river facade of rising steadily to become a major boom in Goding's Lion Brewery, Lambeth. The the 1880s. These construction works brewhouse was built in 1836-37 in classi- were generally carried out at the brew- cal style by Francis Edwards, one of the eries of the medium- to large-scale first architects to specialise in the design industrial brewers, who prospered in this of industrial structures. Goding's trade- period, whilst the publican-brewers and mark lion was supplied by the nearby small-scale producers were in decline.4 Coade's artificial stone works, and was Towards the end of the nineteenth cen- one of their last products before its clo- tury breweries became not only more sure. Fortunately the lion survived the numerous but more ornamental, with tiles demolition of the brewery in 1949, and and colourful glazed bricks used as now looks across the Thames from the exterior decoration from the early 1870s east side of Westminster Bridge. onward. The emphasis was usually on decoration of the brewhouse tower or The first recorded instance of ceramics chimney, thus attracting public attention used decoratively inside an inn occurs in to the brewery within the townscape. 64 Journal of the Brewery History Society The 120' high brewhouse tower of including everything from barrels, bot- Cronshaw's Alexandra Brewery, tles and jugs to internal and external Manchester, was built in 1872 by the decorative faience for public houses; architect James Redford, a local man this important element of their overall with a wide-ranging general practice. The production began in the mid nineteenth architectural style of the brewery was century and continued until the 1930s. described by The Builder as being 'early Their involvement with the brewers Lombardian Gothic'; Redford used stone Watney's even extended to the produc- dressings, ornamental brickwork and tion of several sizeable tile panels for panels of glazed green and red bricks to the Watney family home at Pangbourne, enliven the tower. The Italianate style Berkshire, in 1885; one panel purported was used for occasional breweries, for to include a view of the brewery itself, instance the Swan Brewery in distinguished largely by its plethora of Leatherhead, erected in 1874 by the chimney stacks.8 London architect W. Barns-Kinsey. Here, the basic red brick form of the steam From the early 1880s, glazed bricks brewery was decorated with blue and were preferred by brewers' architects as white moulded bricks, while the chimney the most hygienic finish for internal walls shaft sported bands of encaustic tiles.5 of the brewhouse and fermenting rooms. The brewhouse tower at Kirk's Castle The first report in the trade press to Brewery, Stockton-on-Tees, built as part mention this material concerns John of the enlargement of the brewery in Smith's majestic new brewery at 1878, was decorated with a broad che- Tadcaster, built in 1883 and designed by quered frieze of tiles just below roof the well-known London brewers' archi- level.6 tects Scamell & Colyer. Here only the tun room was faced with white-glazed All these 1870s breweries have long bricks, but by the end of the decade a since been demolished, along with the publicity-orientated Brewers' Journal brewery warehouse built for the London article on Ramsden's Stone Trough firm of bottlers M.B. Foster & Sons in Brewery, Halifax, enthused 'The internal 1874 by the architect Thomas Harris, a facings of the brewery are almost entirely strong advocate of iron construction. of white glazed bricks, with coloured The warehouse, illustrated and glazed brick dados, thus adding consid- described at length in The Builder, was erably to the maintenance of cleanli- ornamented with glazed tiles and terra- ness.' The Stone Trough was designed cotta by Doulton of Lambeth. Lettering by William Bradford, the most high-pro- on the tiles spelled out Foster's name, file and prolific of the late nineteenth- address and trade; they were probably century brewers' architects. In one of his the largest bottling firm in the world at many published pieces on brewery this time.7 Doulton's produced all types design, he opined: of ware for brewers and publicans, Brewery History Number 124/5 65 Figure 1. Decorative glazed brickwork in the former hop store of the Mersey Brewery, Liverpool. 'Where the first outlay is not such a seri- larger new breweries, with specially made ous consideration, I would most strongly bricks used to turn difficult internal angles, advise the free use of glazed bricks for thus doing away with sharp, hard-to-clean the interior, more especially for the corners. Coloured glazed bricks were engine room, mash tun stage, and fer- often added to form decorative dados, as menting house, as walls thus built are in the attractive fermenting room of Cain's much slower to receive the natural accu- Mersey Brewery, Liverpool, which was mulations of dirt, dust, and moisture aris- built by 1902 (Fig. 1). ing in a brewery than an ordinary brick wall, and the air can consequently be During the 1880s, although the decora- kept in a much purer condition; and tive or ornamental brewery became absolute cleanliness ... which is of the almost commonplace, external ceramic greatest importance ... can be easily display was far from lavish. William maintained by washing down the walls, Bradford used terracotta dressings on his and without interfering in any way with first substantial brewery contract, the working of the brewery.'9 Stansfeld's Swan Brewery, Fulham (1881-82), while Scamell & Colyer speci- By the turn of the century, internal white fied specially-designed external tile pan- glazed brick finishes were the norm for els beneath the windows of Walker's 66 Journal of the Brewery History Society Clarence Street Brewery, Burton upon Trent (1883).