As recently as forty years ago field after field of tall chestnut poles supporting climbing hop bines were familiar sights as we drove round East Hampshire. Bentley, Blackmoor and Butiton were at the heart the 3000 acres of hops grown in Hampshire, supplying the brewing industry of Alton and Petersfield. Every September whole families moved away from Portsmouth to live and work in the fields round Buriton, and many’s the small boy who, when asked the reason for his long absence from school by his teacher, replied, “I bin ’oppin’ sir.”

It’s hard for us to think of Petersfield as a centre of brewing, but at the start of the last century there were three breweries in the town, to say nothing of the many small home-brew houses that existed during the 19th century and even earlier. Names like Edward Patrick, Thomas Bone and James Moon are totally forgotten, but Walter Seward brewed at the Royal Oak in Sheep Street in 1867, and ten years later William Fitt, a coach maker and builder, was brewing at the Market Inn.

Christopher Crassweller had a brewery behind Moreton House in the Spain, and also traded from No. 11 The Square. But the best known of these early names is George Henty, who owned several malthouses behind Dragon Street, and later merged with Constable & Son Ltd. of Arundel to form the famous Henty & Constable Ltd. of the Westgate Brewery, Chichester.

Which brings us to the three breweries surviving in the 20th century. The Square Brewery was first recorded as being operated by the Holland family in 1739 and it had several owners before it was bought by Thomas Weeks, a maltster from Lower House Farm, Oxenbourne, in 1892. The business was purchased by George Gale & Co. Ltd. in 1907, and although the brewery was soon closed, The Square Brewery survives today as a thriving public house. It is sometimes still affectionately called the Six Day House, a throwback to when it only opened on the brewery’s working days.

For many years one of the most striking sights in Petersfield must have been the great tower of Luker’s Brewery, situated at the junction of Tor Way and College Street, occupying a similarly dominant position on the London - Portsmouth Road as Gales Brewery does today in Horndean. The Steam Brewery, as it was called, was first developed by Robert Crafts, owner of the Red Lion, the Dolphin, just across the road, and the Railway Hotel, and was acquired by the Luker family from Southend in 1880 for £7604-8s-0d.

Trading as W. & R. Luker, the brewery served eight public houses, including the Harrow, the Jolly Drover and the Queen’s Head, Sheet. Ill health and difficult trading conditions led to the brewery being sold to Strong & Co. of Romsey in 1934, and later that year it was the scene of the most spectacular fire the town has ever seen, as thousands of people watched the mellow red brick building blaze. It was demolished soon afterwards, with just the nearby Antrobus Almshouses surviving until the site was cleared for the one-way system.

The last of Petersfield’s breweries was the Borough Brewery, established by Thomas Amey in 1883, which lasted until 1951. Amey was a dairy farmer and manufacturer of condensed milk, who built his brewery at the south end of Frenchman’s Road, next to the railway - a site now occupied by the Amey Industrial Estate.

His daughter, Elizabeth, took over the running of the brewery in 1896, and had the reputation of being a formidable character and a strict employer. Amey’s estate ran to twenty houses, including the Bell and the Royal Oak in Petersfield, the Trooper at Froxfield, and pubs as far afield as Portsmouth, Guildford and even London, where the Hole in the Wall near Waterloo Station was handily placed to receive barrels direct from Amey’s own railway siding. Among the brewery’s products were the delightfully named Petersfield Peter and Petersfield Peter’s Sister.

Trading conditions after the war proved difficult for Amey’s, and in 1951 the brewery was sold to Whitbread & Co. Ltd. All that is left today is one large building next to the railway, formerly belonging to George Ewen, and the name of the estate on which the brewery once proudly stood, together with a coloured window in the Prince of Wales at Hammer. Sadly, not even a photograph remains to remind us of this final part of Petersfield’s brewing history, though there must still be some who remember the taste of a pint of Amey’s.

Tom Muckley, February 2003

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

tommuckley.co.uk