The recent purchase of Gales Brewery and its 111 public houses heralds a worrying time for employees, uncertainty for the whole village and an anxious time for real ale drinkers. Yet take-overs and mergers have been the life-blood of the brewing industry from time immemorial. Gales themselves bought Weeks and Co. aka. The Square Brewery in Petersfield as long ago as 1907. The attached pub is still a Gales house, but the brewhouse, situated at the rear, was closed soon afterwards. Before that, in September 1899, the Editor of the Country Brewers’ Gazette had lamented, “Still the tale of brewery amalgamations goes on. Scarcely a week passes without the paper announcing the amalgamation of two or more large breweries, or the absorbtion of one or more smaller ones. How long is it going on?”

For a century and more is the answer. Here in Petersfield Luker’s brewery in College Street was taken over by Strong & Co. Ltd. of Romsey in 1929. Strong’s itself became part of the giant Whitbread empire in 1969.

It was Whitbread & Co. Ltd. who brought about the demise of Petersfield’s other brewery, Amey’s. For some years after the war Amey’s struggled to trade in the difficult post war conditions, and the business was sold to Whitbread’s in June 1951, and brewing ceased. Other than one or two featureless buildings on the trading estate named after the brewery, nothing remains other than a beautiful stained glass window at the Prince of Wales pub at Hammer, proudly proclaiming “Amey’s Petersfield Ale.”

At the beginning of the last century there were more than a dozen breweries operating in Portsmouth, but by 1950 the number was reduced to four. The first of these to disappear was Portsmouth and Brighton United Breweries, Ltd., itself an amalgamation of four smaller breweries, bought by Brickwoods Limited in 1953. Next to go was J.J. Young and Sons, Ltd. of Landport, taken over by its local rival, George Peters and Co. Ltd. in 1959, the very year that Peters itself was acquired by Friary Meux, the Guildford brewery.

Brickwood’s, by now a large concern with many of its 675 pubs displaying familiar brown glazed tiles, fell to Whitbread’s in 1971, and together with Strong’s, became Whitbread Wessex. Whitbread, a notorious destroyer of independent breweries, was eventually swallowed up by the Belgian giant, Interbrew, in 2000. Brewing ceased, and the company specialises in hospitality.

Friary, Holroyd & Healy’s Breweries, Ltd. the long established Guildford brewers, merged with Meux’s Brewery Co. Ltd. of London, to form Friary Meux, which was taken over by Ind Coope, Ltd. in 1964. Although the brewery had long been demolished, the name was revived for a time by Allied Breweries, Ltd. before Allied itself fragmented, forming partnerships with Lyons food company, Domecq sherry and Carlsberg. So the last major brewery in Hampshire is in grave danger, and we must hope that HSB and the unique Prize Old Ale will not be lost for ever. History is not on its side, and if Gale’s goes, a mere dozen microbreweries will remain in the county, all that is left of a once proud industry.

Tom Muckley, February 2006

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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