150 years of the Melbourn Brothers All Saints Brewery
150 years of the Melbourn Brothers (Stamford) – Part 1
By
Geoff Dye
The town of Stamford in South Lincolnshire has a brewing past which dates back to the middle ages, indeed up to the 1930s there were four breweries in the town plus several home brew pubs. All except the All Saints Brewery have now ceased to brew. The last to stop mashing was Phillips St Martins Brewery which was taken over by the Northampton brewery in 1952, before that was Lowe, Son & Cobbold Ltd at the St Michaels Brewery taken over by Hole & Co. Ltd of Newark in 1935 and G & H. R. Hunt of Water Street taken over by Mowbray of Grantham in 1927. There were also two others, a home brew pub, The Exeter Arms up to 1921 and Christopher Martin at 30 Foundry Street, also up to 1921.
The site of the All Saints brewery is said to have had a brewery on it and a public house known as The Talbot dating from the seventeenth century. Surveys by a Cambridge Archaeological Society in the 1960s indicated the area of the offices started life as a medieval dining hall, open from floor to roof with a central fireplace and smoke blackened roof timbers. The brewery itself is a hotch pot of buildings huddled together around a central chimney, some parts being older than others. All are roofed and clad in local materials; brown stone with wavy brown Collyweston slate roofs in keeping with the other buildings in Stamford. The old beer cellar was once used as a maltings. It is thought that the basis for the modern brewery was established in about 1825 prior to the Melbourn Brothers taking over.
About 1865 two sons of a yeoman farmer named Melbourn, who farmed in the village of Ingham just north of Lincoln, decided they wanted to break away from farming and go into the brewing trade. Herbert the elder son decided to go to Germany for a few years to learn more about the brewing trade. On his return he leased the current small brewery on the site and later purchased the business in 1869. In 1870 he was joined by his brother Stanley and the firm of Melbourn Brothers was established. Whilst in Germany, Herbert had been trained in wines and spirits and had made connections there which were useful in building up the wine business for which the brewery was famous. An invoice dated 7th November 1870 showed he purchased bottled wines from H.Sichel & Sohne Germany and two hogsheads of 1865 Claret, the latter he bottled at the brewery. In those days the tied house system was in its infancy and the brothers relied mainly upon private customers and farmers for their trade in the immediate area of the town.
However with the brewery previously being leased from the Marquess of Exeter there was an opportunity to supply and lease a handful of public houses also owned by the Marquess from the Burleigh estate which he owned. After acquiring the brewery, the Brothers set about an expansion and an update of the plant.
In 1873 a new open Pontifex copper was installed as well as three round fermentation vessels which were made of white cedar (later copper lined), they were made by three different companies. The companies being Shuters, Chippingdale and Collyer giving a total capacity of 190 barrels. A hop back was also installed being supplied by Brindley and Biggs. The total brew length was 60 barrels and by 1970 they were still brewing two or three times a week with this equipment. The two brothers registered the private company in 1875 and the following year disaster struck when a fire broke out damaging some of the plant. This led to the mash tun being replaced with a new 12 qtr vessel.
By 1896 the Brothers had re-equipped the brewery which then had a new chimney, together with the new mash tun, copper, hop back and fermentation vessels all lined or made of copper. The only second hand plant was an old steam engine made by Marshalls of Gainsborough and a horizontal Cornish boiler. The engine drove a mill and the sparge arms in the mash tun. A new coal fired Cornish boiler was installed in 1902 which lasted for some 70 years before being condemned. By 1904 one of the peak years early in the C20th, brewing costs were as follows for the year;
- Beer Duty £2324
- Malt £2400
- Hops £1016
- Cooper £142/10/-
- Beer bottles £42/15/-
Interestingly it is noted that the company bottled beer which was unusual for such a small organisation at this time. For the rest of the trade, the company sold the beers in hogsheads, barrels, kilderkins and firkins, the latter two mainly for private customers and farmers. It was during this period when wines and spirits sales became a very important part in the company’s business. The cellars under the offices were ideal for the storage of casks of clarets, ports, rum, gin, French brandy and whisky. They were bottled by hand and corked using a primitive corking machine and stored in racks. In 1904 the wage bill of the brewery totalled £18 per week, whilst the men’s beer allowance totalled just over £1 a week.
In 1910 Herbert purchased a second hand 1908 De Dion car costing £175 but spent £82/15/- on repairs over the next year. Also in that year the company purchased, second hand from a Biggleswade laundry, a 15 HP steam engine for well pumping, cask washing and drying. In February 1912 they replaced the car with another one costing £162 and for the Grantham depot purchased a motorcycle. In 1912 the office was equipped with a typewriter and the company was one of the first to have a telephone in Stamford.
In this period major depots were established and by 1912 they had depots at Grantham and Brayford Head in Lincoln with smaller ones at Leicester and Whittlesey. Herbert ran the business at Stamford and Stanley was based at Grantham as well as looking after Lincoln. In Stamford the railway station was nearby and the Brothers used the railways to supply the depots with onward deliveries being made by horse and cart within a 25 mile delivery area of each depot. With the Brothers’ connections they were able to purchase four public houses in the Lincoln area where they were not represented. During this period most brewers were purchasing public houses and by 1923 they had bought or leased some 22 tied properties. It was about this time that the partnership was dissolved and the depots at Grantham and Lincoln were closed to save on costs. Herbert retired to Bournemouth and the brewery was run by a Brewer/Manager. Herbert died in January 1927 leaving the profits to his wife and the business in trust to the male descendants of his brothers as he had no children himself.
The brewery entered a period of little activity and cautious expansion with six houses purchased over four years. These were: in 1927 The Boot and Shoe at South Luffenham. The Brewery Inn home brew pub in Stamford in 1929 and in 1931 purchased four pubs:-
- The Six Bells Witham
- The Five Bells Morton
- The Crown Inn Casterton
- The Plough Inn Casterton
Later that year the Royal Oak Heckington was fully rebuilt. In 1936 as the company’s assets increased it was decided to make the brewery into a private limited company. The 1930s were a difficult time for breweries but the company had during this time achieved a substantial base in its wines and spirits trade which helped offset any loss of trade in the pubs.
The Second World War brought a few problems with supplies limited and the introduction of zoning where the company supplied other brewers local pubs whilst their own distant ones were supplied by competitors. The war time also had a major influence on the trade in wines and spirits with supplies of wines particularly a problem. From about 1900 until the outbreak of the Second World War bulk deliveries of spirits in hogsheads were made to the company and they made their profit on ‘marrying’ that is watering down to the correct strength, bottling and selling.
On receipt, the spirits in the hogsheads were put into a large room some 25 feet high, behind the lower office. Around the room were four huge wooden vats of 500, 400 and two of 250 gallons capacity made of oak and about 2.5 inches thick. The vats were polished outside and bound by black hoops. The first process was to empty the hogsheads into two gallon copper cans. These were counted on a tally card and handed up to a cellarman at the top of a ladder who kept another tally card as a check. The can was then emptied into a copper funnel in the head of the vat. During the operation the strength of the spirit was checked several times and entered in a register for Excise approval. The strength and quantity of the new spirit determined the amount of distilled water required and this was gradually added over a period of a week or so. The gradual dilution was necessary as too much water in one go made the final product cloudy and it was almost impossible to rectify. During the operations the mixture was stirred using a huge pole which was inserted in the top of the vat and turned like a dolly peg. After a period of rest the spirits were either bottled for individual sale or put into earthenware jars of a gallon or half gallon for pubs. This was a very labour and time-consuming process which continued until the mid 1950s when they were taken out of service.