Ernest Whicher, Cattle Dealer & Brewer

From Brewery History Society Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

ERNEST GEORGE WHICHER OF PORTSMOUTH, CATTLE DEALER AND BREWER by Philip Eley

Whicher & Co


Towards the end of the 1840s John Miles returned with his family to his native England from France where he had been involved with laying railway tracks. They settled in a beerhouse known as the Three Elms (now Scott's Bar) on a corner of King Street in Southsea and within a few months John had set up the Elm Brewery alongside in Eldon Street. Over the ensuing years he built up a tied estate on Portsea Island requiring him, by 1863, to expand his brewing capacity with a new brewery on the opposite corner of Eldon and King Streets. The 1870s saw further expansion at the new site which, by 1874, was known as John Miles and Son - the son being Thomas Miles. At their father's death in 1878 Thomas and his brother Henry inherited the business and, although they added only a handful more to the thirty-odd tied houses, made substantial additions to the brewery in the following year.

Thomas Miles had married Eliza Cooke and together they produced three children who inherited Thomas' share of the business on his death in 1885. These three were Edith, John and Bertha Miles and their interests in the brewery were looked after by a trust initially administered by their mother Eliza and her brother John Cooke. In 1890 Edith married cattle dealer Ernest Whicher and he, along with brother-in-law John, became the trustees of Messrs Miles and Son in 1893. Thus Ernest Whicher's name became associated with brewing in Portsmouth.

Ernest George Whicher was born in nearby Havant in 1863 into a family that had had brewing interests in Emsworth since before the beginning of the century. By the time of Ernest's birth their brewing connections had been severed; his father George was a coal merchant. One similarity between coal and beer is that it is heavy and thus requires horse-drawn transport for its supply over any distance. Certainly Ernest in later life supplied dray horses to local breweries and one may surmise that his initial connection to Miles' brewery was through that business. Whatever the reason, once married to Eliza he could number himself amongst the partners in a reasonably successful brewery, and thus be in a position to benefit from the money raised from its sale in 1896.

The buyer of the Elm Brewery and its forty licensed premises was William Dupree an entrepreneur who had learned the trade and risen to be manager of the Southsea branch of Reading brewers H & G Simonds. In 1895 he had bought the Cosham Steam Brewery, Cosham High Street, from George Dean and the Beehive Brewery, Warblington Street, Portsmouth from Alexander Stannard, supplying the combined tied estate from the Cosham site. During 1896 he negotiated with the Miles family for the sale of their brewery and, more importantly, their tied estate. In order to finance these three deals he set up a limited company, Portsmouth United Breweries Ltd, with himself as managing director and chief shareholder. The conveyance of the Elm Brewery and premises was signed in December leaving the descendants of John Miles better off by £64,437/17/10.

Ernest and Edith Whicher received their share of the money, and also a taste for the profits to be made at that time in the brewing industry. It should therefore come as no surprise that within a few months Ernest had bought another, smaller, Portsmouth brewery with a wine and spirit shop attached. The Star Brewery on the corner of Queen Street and Lion Terrace, Portsea, had the distinction of being the last newly-founded brewery in the town, it having been built in about 1890 by wine merchant James Shaft who had an interest as mortgagee in a number of local pubs although he never owned one outright. Shaft sold his business for £17,000 in 1896 to fellow brewer and wine merchant George Peters and the latter, not requiring the buildings, sold them on to Whicher who continued with both the brewing and the wine and spirit business. Although there was still a fair amount of trade to private families, survival as a brewer demanded a tied estate. By this time Portsmouth had very few free houses and Whicher initially only managed to buy a single beerhouse. It was perhaps this lack of beer trade within the town that led to his next move in 1898 when the Cosham Brewery came onto the market.

Cosham, on the mainland immediately north of Portsea Island (now part of the City of Portsmouth), was a little village on the important London to Portsmouth turnpike road which formed Cosham's High Street. Amongst a number of coaching inns was the George (later the George and Dragon) which in 1859 was bought by Jane King who had just succeeded her late husband James as brewer at the aptly named King's Head in nearby Hilsea. After the King's Head burned down, Mrs King built the Cosham Brewery on a piece of ground behind the George and Dragon. After her death the brewery was bought by Thomas Henley Canning (in 1877) who in turn sold it to George Henry Dean in 1882.

When Dupree acquired the Elm Brewery it was in a very run-down condition and his plan was to close it down and supply the combined tied estate from an enlarged Cosham Brewery. This was abandoned in the face of opposition from the villagers and the Elm Brewery was completely rebuilt, re-opening in 1898 and thus making the Cosham Brewery surplus to requirements.

At this point Ernest Whicher renewed his acquaintance with United and took on a seven year lease with the option to buy at any time for the sum of £2,500. He kept the wine and spirit business going at the former Star Brewery premises, but moved his brewing operations to Cosham. Within two years he had exercised his right to buy the premises but he was unable to secure any more tied houses Again that may have been the reason for his decision to sell out in 1900. The overall business must have been in a reasonably good state as he accepted an offer of £25,000 from Messrs Scarlett and Sedgwick. They continued to trade as E G Whicher and Co, wine and spirit merchants and brewers in Queen Street and Cosham. The new owners managed to buy two beerhouses, one in Havant and one in Emsworth. It is likely that Ernest was forbidden by the terms of the sale to start another brewing business within the immediate area but he retained his original beerhouse, added another one to it and spent some of the proceeds of the brewery sale on buying the prestigious Anchor Hotel in the centre of Chichester.

Brewing continued at Cosham until 1906 when a merger between Charles Gillett's Buckland Brewery and Whicher and Co was announced. The Cosham Brewery became a factory manufacturing artificial horse-hair. Whicher himself had continued as a cattle dealer, founding the Cosham and Petersfield Market Company. He sold the Anchor Hotel in 1905 and then entered into a partnership with F C Bridges in Portsmouth as hotel and licensed house valuers. He seems to have used his own services as he sold his two Portsmouth beerhouses in 1907 to Brighton brewers Abbey and Co (Kemp Town Brewery). Two years later the partnership bought the lone Gosport pub owned by Eldridge Pope. A further two years passed before Whicher announced the setting-up of a new partnership to buy a brewery in order to supply the “family” trade.

The third brewery to be known as Whicher and Co was a few hundred yards north of Gillett's Buckland Brewery in Kingston Road, Portsmouth. The Kingston Brewery had been founded in 1805 and for most of its existence had been owned by the Murrell family. On the death of Richard Murrell in 1884 it was bought at auction by wine merchant George Peters who wished to add brewing to his business. This was the same George Peters who had sold Whicher the Star Brewery in 1896 and thus history repeated itself in 1911. George Peters and Co Ltd. had recently bought the share capital of another local brewer J.J. Young and Sons Ltd., and had transferred all production to Young's Victory Brewery. The Kingston Brewery came with a retail shop attached, the Kingston Brewery Tap but Messrs Whicher, Pink and Whitham trading as Whicher and Co also bought off-licensed shops in three densely-populated areas of Portsmouth as outlets for their beers. Alas it was not enough. By the time war broke out in 1914 the brewery was closed and the equipment up for sale. Curiously, Whicher then bought a parcel of three pubs in Portsmouth from Henty's brewery in Chichester, and one from Kinnell and Hartley (who operated from Whicher's grandfather's brewery in Emsworth) and promptly leased them to Abbey and Co. of Brighton who at the same time bought the lone Gosport outlet. The off-licences were sold in 1915 and the brewery was eventually demolished being replaced by a cinema, but the Brewery Tap with the adjacent bottling stores was sold to London brewers Hammerton who bottled their famed Stockwell Stout there for many years.

At the end of hostilities, the four remaining pubs were sold to Abbey and Co. but Whicher did not completely severed his connections with the brewing industry. He had fallen back on his historical links to United and had become their wine and spirit importer in 1917. In 1923 he acted as estate agent for United when they sold a pub in Chichester and he had invested £400 in United shares in 1928-29. His connections to the company were still strong enough in May 1933 for his death to be mentioned in the director's minute book. His obituary in the local newspaper revealed that he had remained a horse dealer throughout his working life. Perhaps he viewed pubs and breweries in the same light as cattle - as commodities to be bought, fattened and sold?