Charles Campbell McLeod

'Charles Cambell McLeod by Peter Moynihan

Having looked into the eventful life of William Humphrey Golding, perhaps we had better take a look at the chap who was actually making the beer, well at least in the last four or five years of the Bat & Ball/Oak Brewery’s short life.

In 1901 the twenty one year old Charles Campbell MacLeod was living in Haverhill, Suffolk, where he was working for Messrs. F. C. Christmas & Co., of the Haverhill Brewery. He hadn’t been working there for very long though because in 1907, at an inquest into the death of a brewery worker who had died from blood poisoning after being severely scalded by steam from the brewery boiler, he stated that he had worked there for seven years. He didn’t work there for much longer either because in March 1908 he was before the Licensing Justices in Sevenoaks trying, once again, to get that retail license for the Bat & Ball Brewery! He was living with his parents at Firbanks, St Johns Road, but he did return to Haverhill in October of that year; he was married at the Old Independent Church there to Miss Elsie Louise Gurteen, daughter of Mr & Mrs Jabez Gurteen; the Gurteen family were textile and clothing manufacturers, and proprietors of the Chauntry Mill in Haverhill.

Charles’ father Murdoch MacLeod was a retired banker, who had been born in Scotland in 1833, although Charles had been born in Australia! The family lived in the Belfast area of Victoria (now known as Port Fairy) where Murdock was not only a bank manager, but a J.P. and the C.O. of the local detachment of the Royal Victoria Volunteer Artillery. I have been unable, as yet, to discover whether Charles learned his brewing there at Frederick Guinn's Victoria Brewery in Gipps Street or not. If he did then I suppose that might offer some explanation as to why Goldings were brewing Lager Beer. As to what became of Charles after the collapse of Goldings; he went on to become the proprietor of the Bourne Brewery Co. Ltd in Bourne, Lincolnshre, selling out to Soames & Co. and becoming their Head Brewer. He died in 1955, leaving an estate of £46,527.

In following up whether Charles Campbell MacLeod learned his brewing in Australia I was unable to find when the family returned to the UK in the available shipping lists. However, I did discover that there was a collapse of the banking system in Victoria in 1893 and at that time his father, Murdoch MacLeod, would have been sixty years of age so it would be safe to assume that Charles returned to Blighty at about the age of 14 or 15.

See also:- Ketton & King's Cliffe Brewery Co. Ltd