Garnes of Gloucestershire - A History

The Garnes of Gloucestershire by Richard O Garne

Return to Garne & Sons Ltd

Burford is a little town on the Oxfordshire Gloucester border, which lies on the main road from London and Oxford to Gloucester and South Wales.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, it had been a busy and prosperous little place due to the coaching trade. After the railways were built it declined in population and importance so that by 1900 it was down to twelve hundred people.

In 1798 a man named Street started a small brewery in Sheep Street in what had probably been the brewhouse of the Lamb Inn next door. This brewery was bought by a Mr Tuckwell in the 1840s, on whose death in 1857, his widow Charlotte Tuckwell of Signet near Burford, had made over the Brewery, the Brewery House, the machinery and equipment and three public houses to her daughter, Isobelle’s husband was Thomas Henry Reynolds who with his brother were tenants of the Brewery.

In 1876, George Garne’s second son, William George, left Framlingham College when he was rising eighteen. He sent to Burford to bee apprenticed to T H Reynolds to learn brewing and to live in his house.

T H Reynolds was a leading member of a religious sect called Plymouth Brethren which was enjoying a little popularity at the time in the west country. Willy Garne was at an impressionable age and was converted to these beliefs by T H Reynolds and his wife. This act was to have far reaching consequences in the Garne family for the next seventy years.

The beliefs of the Plymouth Brethren were peculiar, mostly based on one sentence from 2 Corinthians 6, “ Come out from among them and be ye separate”. This was interpreted that members could not eat or drink with “unbelievers” or in fact take part in any activity, not even marriage, with them. Churches and chapels and all who attended them were disapproved of. All games, sports, alcoholic drink, tobacco, theatres and places of entertainment were unacceptable. Even at work, members had to keep apart and not consort with others.

What persuaded George Garne to give up farming and take to brewing is not known but no doubt he saw the agricultural depression as something which had come to stay. His eldest son, Thomas, seemed to prefer horse-racing, drinking and living a wild life to hard work. It is probable George saw more future in taking over a country brewery than struggling on in farming. So at Lady Day 1880 he had a dispersal sale of his famous herd of Shorthorn cattle and a separate sale of the live and dead stock of Churchill Heath.

Most landlords were having difficulty in letting arable farms, as tenants first failed on their rents and then gave up or went bankrupt. Squire Langston, like most landlords, had to change his ideas to find a tenant as all. This was the chance for farmers from Wales, Cornwall and Devon to take over Cotswold farms., These men were prepared to work hard with completely different methods to survive. Farmers of large Cotswold farms had always been scornful of dairying and dairy cows, growing vegetables and doing manual work themselves. These newcomers did all these things, kept up no style and did not keep horses or go hunting. One Welsh farmer even kept calves in the drawing room of a Cotswold farm house, so that fifty years later the marks where the manure had stood always showed in damp weather two feet u the wall. Leases had to be rewritten so that there was no longer rigid adherence to rotations., but anything could be grown which did not make a loss. The tenant could also be a non-conformist, hitherto unacceptable by many landlords like Langston.

The Rose family from Cornwall took over Churchill Heath and their descendants had it up until 1982.

So it was on 27th April, 1880, George Garne took over Burford Brewery, the machinery and equipment, the Brewery House and three public houses: these were:-

• The Royal Oak at Burford with two cottages adjoining • The Plough at Clanfield • The Prince of Wales at Shrivenham

This was on a ninety-nine year lease, paying £1,5000 for the goodwill, a premium of £770, and a rent of £120 a year. T H Reynolds agreed to leave £2,000 in the business on which George paid seven and a half percent interest for five years. Reynolds also agreed to manage the business till Michaelmas 1880, when George, Caroline and their two sons, Willy and Arthur, a cook and a housemaid, moved into The Brewery House.

George started trading in the early summer of 1880 as “George Garne, Brewer, Maltster and Hop Merchant” selling beer to the three public houses and private houses all over the district delivered by brewer’s dray, with an agent (known as an outride) to collect the orders by pony and trap. He also sold malt and hops to those who brewed their own beer.

At that time it was usual for all farmhouses and in fact private houses of all sorts to buy beer by the cask twice a year, keep it in the cellar and tap it as required. Garne’s brewery sold family stock ale at one shilling a gallon, superior stock ale at one shilling and sixpence a gallon and mild beer at eight pence a gallon: in eighteen and thirty-six gallon casks.

By 1881, Willy was doing the brewing, Arthur was in the office doing the books and George was running the business employing nine men. It was not long before business expanded and over the next ten years the machinery and equipment was modernised and increased to a ten quarter plant (1 ton). The steam engine which drove all the machinery was built by Thomas Rose of Witney in 1885. It was run on coke and required a skilled man to operate it. It was still in use when brewing stopped in 1969.

The counting house was to one side of the main brewery entrance, a small room with a stone flagged floor, a small coal fire, a long desk with sloping top made of solid mahogany along which three people could work at large ledgers if they were standing up. Above this desk and looking at the main passage into the brewer was a long glass window, so that those working at the desk could see everything that went on in the main entrance which was wide enough to admit a horse and cart. On the shelf outside this window at one end was a small brass slot, so that those who came for a little yeast for breadmaking could put their penny in the lot, which fell into a locked drawer under the desk to inside. This part of the window could be opened so that orders could be taken without customers coming into the office.

This office remained unaltered for ninety years with three men standing up art the long desk. One of these was Willy Garne who occupied the position in the corner until he was ninety-one, still signing every cheques that left the business and still working a full day. Throughout this time smoking was not permitted in the office. Going into that office was like going into something out of Dickens.

During 1882, a nephew of George Garne, Austin Hewer, one of his sister’s seven sons came for a period to learn brewing from Willy Garne. He, too, was converted to being a Plymouth Brother. He became a brewer in the north of England. Austin Hewer’s brother, Raymond, also became a brewer at Croydon.

WILLY AND ARTHUR

In the autumn of 1883, when he was twenty-five, Willy married Henrietta Rich, known as Hetty. She was the daughter of a sea captain, master of one of the first steam ships “The Hanover”. They took the tenancy of a tall Georgian house in Sheep Street, Burford , and called it “Hanover”.

Three years later Arthur married Alice Newman, known as Mellie, from her second name, Mahala. Alice was a daughter of John Newman who had come to Burford as an apprentice to a draper. He had come from Cirencester and married Jane Trinder, the chemist’s daughter. By 1886, he had bought the business, rebuilt the shop in the High Street in the heavy Victorian style, calling it Grafton House. Burford was still cut off from the large towns so there was scope for a draper to branch out. John Newman had a horse and van which went round the whole district selling drapery, haberdashery, clothes, took orders for men’s suits, hats and a wide variety of articles. He was also an undertaker.

Arthur and Mellie took a solid house as the top of the High Street called “East View” with a large garden which was an interest of Arthur’s. He laid out a grass tennis court and bowling green and kept poultry and a calf and pony for his son.

In the next few years the number of public houses belonging to the brewery was increased by the purchase of:-

• The Jubilee Inn at Bampton for £650 • The White Horse, High Street, Burford for £730 • The Bull at Faringdon for £725 • The Queen’s Arms at Faringdon for £1,470

In 1895 George Garne took his two sons into partnership and the firm became known as Garne and Sons. A new lease with T H Reynolds was drawn up on very much the same terms as that of fifteen years earlier, but giving the Garnes the option to purchase for £3,000 closing on 29th September, 1927.

An annuity of £50 a year was to be paid to T H Reynolds and £20 a year to his wife. By now Reynolds was living at “Highview”, a large house on the main turnpike road, later to be used as a hotel when the road became the A 40.

Business was still expanding so in 1895 trading in wines and spirits was begun. A wine and spirit store was built underneath the granaries so that large stocks could be held and the growing free trade supplied, much of it now by rail from Shipton Station, a village five miles to the north.

A bottling plant was installed and the sale of bottled beers and stout begun with a label which became well known in the district over the next seventy years.

Burford still had its annual hiring fair at Michaelmas when farmworkers came looking for fresh jobs and farmers came looking for men as was the custom to engage farm staff for a year. The streets were lined with booths and stalls and livestock was sold.

George Garne kept the goodwill of the public and the name of the brewery well known, by inviting all those of his customers who had paid their bills, to a free cold lunch in the granary of his brewery. Large joints of ham and beef were sliced and blue pint china cups were filled with draught beer. Some years as many as six hundred people were entertained and the office was kept busy dealing with the overdue accounts.

This gathering became known as one of the social events of the year and was also a very good way of advertising Garne’s Brewery.

Quite naturally George Garne’s interest was still cattle breeding and he was still in demand as a judge at major shows. He also spent some time advertising his daughter and grandson, Caroline and Tom Handy on their farming at Hampden, Caroline’s husband having died young.

In 1897, George and Caroline had their golden wedding and a big party was held in the granary with all the staff and their families invited. George was given a Bible by the staff and Caroline and umbrella.

By now Willy and Hetty had two daughters and a son, Ethel and Marion (known as Topsy) and William Nelson Rich, known as Nelson to keep his mother’s seafaring family tradition.

When she was old enough Willy would take Ethel in the gig on Sunday evenings to preach the Plymouth Brethren “word” round the villages. When he did this at Aldsworth parish, his cousins strongly disapproved and thought this a very unbecoming practice for a member of the Garne family. In fact, it was thought there might be an attempt to preach radical disaffection among the labourers, as sometimes the meetings were held in cottages.

The whole thing was summed up as “bloody psalm singers”, no more beer was bought from Burford Brewery and the two families never spoke to each other again. Forty years later nothing had changed.

Arthur and Mellie meanwhile had five children, two boys and three girls; one boy and one girl died as babies leaving the son, Arthur George Douglas (known as Douglas) and two daughters, Hilda and Elsie very much younger.

Arthur had not the serious disposition of his brother but enjoyed games and going to horse-races. He became a J.P. He is always remembered as giving eggs from his poultry to any passing tramp who called, and there were plenty of vagrants at that time.

TOM, THE AUCTIONEER

No account of the Garne family in Burford at the end of the last century would be complete without mention of Thomas, George’s eldest son and his family. Thomas was obviously the “black sheep” of the family, who had married Susan Penson at Churchill Heath and became an auctioneer and valuer. One of the problems for the genealogist is “black sheep”. Few of the relatives will mention them, especially in a period such as late Victorian times when to be respectable, sober and industrious was the aim. Thomas was obviously none of these things. What he lived on after he ceased to belong to Acock, Hanks and Garne in 1882 is a mystery, although he still farmed Maughesbury Farm with a pedigree Shorthorn herd until 1887. There are documents in existence rubber stamped Thomas Garne, auctioneer and valuer, dated 1883 after he had left Acock and Hanks. It is known however, that he moved to Burford to a house in Sheep Street next to “Hanover”. Children never have the reticence or disapproval of “black sheep” of their parents, so Willy’s eldest daughter, Ethel, when she was eighty-nine, remembered playing as a child with her cousins next door. Although Willy’s children were forbidden to have anything to do with Thomas’ children, a hole was made in the dividing hedge so that secret games could be played. Another hole led into the Newman’s garden so that Arthur’s children could join in.

Ethel also remembered the hushed conversations when her father or grandfather had to pay Thomas’ debts, a frequent occurrence.

No more children were born to Thomas and Susan after they left Maughesbury Farm. There were only the two children, Thomas and Constance, born in the first three years of marriage. The reason for this is unknown. It is possible, you could even say probable, Thomas was an alcoholic.

The stories told by old people about him, forty years after his death, all relate to his liking for drink. There was the occasion when as an auctioneer he was required to sell the livestock for Robert Penson, his wife’s uncle, at the latter’s dispersal sale at Foxcote Farm, the next farm to Churchill Heath. Unfortunately, Tom Garne drank too much at lunch and collapsed among the sheep he was selling, so that there was a delay until another auctioneer, James Tayler, could be found to carry on with the sale.

At that time there was scope for auctioneers of livestock. The repeal of the tax on auctions in the sixties had left the way open for good judges of livestock to start auction sales. John Thornton started in 1868 as an auctioneer and soon established a national reputation and a business still in existence today. He was able to sell cattle at twenty lots an hour. There is no evidence however of Tom Garne conducting auction sales after 1883.

When he died one January night in 1898, aged forty-six, the doctor stated he died from an apoplectic fit. It is significant that he was buried at Fulbrook, the next village, and not Burford. According to the newspaper account the funeral procession consisted of two carriages only. He left no will and no probate was granted so presumably he died penniless.

TOM, THE CRICKETER

The two children of Tom and Susan were a boy, Tom and a girl, Constance. The boy was sent to Burford Grammar School as a day boy no doubt. By the time he was seventeen he was in the first XL at cricket and is mentioned in the school magazine in 1893 as the best bowler the school had ever had. Tom was tall and fair and a very fast bowler. At the time the sports master was G L Jessop who later became Captain of Gloucestershire and played for England.

When he left school, Tom went to London to work for Maples, the furnishers in North London in their brass department. He is next heard of as playing club cricket for Clarence, which was Maples’ sports club. This was in 1899 when he had a very successful season according to a book of newspaper cuttings he kept, now in then possession of his great nephew, Michael Ford. In a match against Cavendish, the sports club of Debenham and Freebody on 7th May, 1899, he took eighteen wickets for seventeen runs. He also broke a stump.

In 1900 he had another good season. When playing for “Bees” against London County, he bowled W G Grace and also his brother. He twice played for the Middlesex 2nd XI at Lords. There is an interesting letter from a club secretary to the Clarence secretary asking for a fixture, but on condition Garne did not play, as his bowling was so fast batsmen were afraid of injury.

Then comes a sudden change, for Tom joins the army. The Royal Artillery as a gunner; a most extraordinary thing to do in 1901, when the army was not enjoying a very good reputation and the life of a private soldier was rough to say the least. There was a certain amount of patriotic fervour brought about by the Boer War and there was a national appeal for volunteers for the army but few joined the ranks for patriotic motives. It was usually to avoid the police, debt or girls. Being a clerk in a London office cannot have seemed very adventurous and no doubt the salary was insufficient for one playing club cricket every weekend. With nothing inherited from his father it seems a possibility that he joined the army to escape debts. Anyway in 1901 he was playing cricket for the Royal Artillery as Bombardier Garne. He was then posted to India where unfortunately he died in 1902 from sunstroke or pneumonia, I am not sure which, and is buried in the military cemetery at Quetta.

It is a pity that army records of that period were all destroyed by German bombs on London in 1942.

CONSTANCE

When Tom the auctioneer died in 1898, his widow, Susan Penson, took a job as a housekeeper to an old friend, a Mr Bartlett of Hampton Grey, Kidlington near Oxford. He was a retired farmer who lived in a large house in style, with a big garden and a boat on the Thames. She is remembered by her grandchildren as dressing like Queen Victoria and being an autocratic old lady. She remained there for twenty years until Mr Bartlett died, then she moved to be near her daughter.

Constance was nineteen when her father died. She had lead a leisurely life, been well educated and was good looking. Nevertheless in 1898 the openings for a girl with no money were very limited indeed, but she took a job as a governess with a family called Hardy at Tisbury in Wiltshire.

After a time the Hardys moved to the Manor House at Swallowcliffe and Constance played the organ in the village church. Naturally she was in demand at social functions and was pursued by the young farmers in the district, one of whom, Charles Ford, she married in 1905.

The Fords had been tenant farmers on the Wardour estate at Hook Farm, Donhead St Andrew, for the previous hundred years.

Charles Ford was a good horseman and a dashing young sergeant in the Wiltshire Yeomanry, the local territorials. He won prizes galore at tall the local point to points. He also liked a social life and plenty to drink. To the marriage there were three sons and a daughter.

The depression in farming in the twenties led to the farm being given up in 1928 and Charles taking jobs as farm manger.

Finally they moved to the Southampton area and took a house large enough to take in boarders. Here it was they both died.

GARNE AND HEWER

To return now to Burford and the turn of the 20th Century, where changes quickly came about. George died in 1902, an old man much respected in the district. The brewery was inherited jointly by his two sons, Willy and Arthur, and his widow, Caroline remained in the Brewery House for two more years until her death in 1904. Willy’s religious scruples would not permit him to enter the church or churchyard for his parents’ funerals.

When the Brewery House became empty on the death of Caroline, her youngest daughter, Florrie, moved in with her four children. She had married in 1890 Frank Lewis of Hereford, but what became of him is not known. Florrie remained in the Brewery House until Nelson and his wife took it over in 1913.

In 1904 there was a bad fire in the brewery which worried the partners whose children were mostly away as boarding schools. Willy’s son was sent to a Plymouth Brethren school at Weston-Super-Mare, where in 1903 Nelson won the medal for the best scholar in the school. Arthur’s son, Douglas, was sent first to Belmore House, a private school in Cheltenham and then to Eastbourne College, a new public school, which it was thought would be in a healthier area, where he was doing very well, until suddenly an without warning his father died.

It was in May 1905 that Arthur decided to go to the St Ledger at Newmarket. His wife, Mellie, often accompanied him on these trips but on this occasions the governess was ill and the two little girls could not be left alone so Arthur departed on his own. Later a telegram was received to say that Arthur had had a heart attack on the race-course, so Mellie set off in the brewery gig for Shipton Station to take the train to Newmarket. But she was too late. Arthur was dead before she arrived.

This of course caused upheaval in the brewery. Douglas was fetched back from school to help with the brewing and Willy was faced with the problem of paying Arthur’s widow her half share of the business without selling any stock or property. The brewery, machinery and stock was valued at £8,426 9s 9d of which £5,375 5s 3d was still owed to Thomas Reynolds and £3,048 6s 6d to Arthur’s executors.

In the event Willy overcame most of his problems by inviting his cousin Austin Hewer to come into partnership with him. This had the advantage that Hewer would put £1,500 into the business. He was a strong member of the Plymouth Brethren sect, an experienced brewer and a man of Willy’s own age. This meant a few years later Douglas was pushed out of the business, so Mellie and her three children moved to London to stay with Mary Cheatle. She was Arthur’s eldest sister who had married Dr Cheatle and moved to London. By this time, Mary was a widow and her four children had left home.

Later Mellie and her children rented a house in Frenchay Road, Oxford. After a few years she moved to Portland Road, Oxford, where she died in 1923.

Austin Hewer moved into a house called “The Lodge”, High Street, Burford, in 1905 and a new partnership deed was drawn up on much the same lines as that between Willy and Arthur. The business continued to trade as Garne and Sons. There was one marked difference, however. Hewer’s religious scruples would not permit him to sell beer in public houses although he did not mind making it. So the partnership let the three original pubs to W G Garne for £40 a year and he would receive 12 ½% on the sale of the beer. The pubs which had been bought subsequent to the original deal with Reynolds had been owned jointly by Wily and Arthur.

The new lease allowed each partner to draw £35 per month for the business and to bring in one son each to the partnership sharing the capital of his father.

Willy’s son, Nelson, had started engineering training in London, where he lodged in the house of a Miss Harrod whose family owned a department store, but on Douglas’ departure Nelson was recalled to Burford to work in the brewery and learn the business.

Nelson’s eldest sister, Ethel, married Dudley Simpson who had an iron and steel business in the Midlands. They had two daughters.

Then in 1911 Hetty, Willy’s wife, died. Willy was very lonely and in the following year married Emily Reynolds, a niece of T H Reynolds who had previously owned the brewery. They spent heir honeymoon at the Regent Palace hotel in London, which seems a bit out of character, but Emily was not a member of the Plymouth Brethren sect. The marriage was not a happy one. No one ever visited “Hanover”, Emily disliked all the Garne family and slept in the attic. She could be heard shouting at Willy and sometimes threw saucepans at him. He spent most of his time at the brewery.

The same year as his father’s second marriage, Nelson married Caroline Spencer from Harrogate who he had first met when she was at school at Malvern with his sister.

On the outbreak of the Great War, Nelson joined the 2nd/1st Huntingdon Cyclist Battalion, who were stationed at Comer in Norfolk. His wife and baby daughter joined him there, where they remained throughout the war. He with the rank of captain. When the war ended they moved back into the Brewery House which had fallen vacant on the death of Florrie Lewis, Nelson’s Aunt. They changed the name of the house to “Barraca” (Spanish for “The Hut”).

Under the terms of the lease of 1895 with T H Reynolds, there was an option to buy for £3,000. With inflation due to the war, by 1918 this figure was very cheap, so the brewery, the machinery, the three original pubs and Barraca were all bought for £3,000 in three instalments of £1,000 in February, May and July 1918.

In the same period, three more pubs were bought:-

• The Lamb, next door to the brewery • The Plough at Alvescot • The Griffen at Witney

The latter was acquired through the inability of the landlord to pay for his supplies over a long period.

In May of 1922, Nelson was taken into the partnership with a half share of his father. The national depression which followed resulted in a falling off of trade so that in 1929 The Lamb was sold to finance the building of a new bottling plant. Brewing was down to thirty barrels a week.

GARNE AND SONS Ltd

In May 1930, the business was turned into a priovate company trading as Garne and Sons Ltd. The directors were W G Garne, A E Hewer, W R N Garne and E Jeffs. Ernest Jeffs had first started work in 1893 as a boy in the brewery and by 1930 he was the buyer.

Garne’s Brewery had always had a good reputation as an employer. Most of the staff of twenty stayed for years and many worked their whole life for the brewery.

In 1931, Emily Garnes (Mrs W G) died. She had left instructions that she was to be buried in London and none of her possessions were to be touched by any of the Garne family. Willy was seventy-three and thereafter spent more time with his son and daughter-in-law at “Barraca”, where there were two granddaughters, Pamela aged seventeen and Esme, aged ten, whose social life was limited by the restrictions of the Plymouth Brethren. But Willy’s principals permitted him to take home a bottle of port from the brewery on frequent occasions and he was known to entertain his family with champagne.

Business must have been looking up by 1932 as a new pub, The Beehive, was built at Carterton and opened in September of that year. It was no longer economic to produce malt on such a small scale so malting was discontinued. After the war in 1946 the malthouse was converted into a flat for Willy who was still living alone. He had his dinner every day in the Lamb next door. Hours of business as published in the 1938 price list remained the same, i.e. 7.00 a.m. Monday to Friday and 7.00 a.m. till 1.00 p.m. on Saturday.

In 1951 Willy was finally unable to carry on working in the office and signing every cheque that went out. Since he was ninety-two and had spent seventy-five years working in the brewery this was not surprising. He was forced to hand over his clerical duties to Frank Wilkinson, who had come into the counting house straight from Burford Grammar School in 1930 to help the clerk, Burton. These three had stood at the long mahogany desk every weekday for the last twenty-years, apart from the war years, which Frank Wilkinson had sent in the Tank Corps, and although seriously wounded had returned to his desk.

In his twenty years nothing had changed; Austin Hewer, now aged eighty-six still sat in the private office upstairs on the other side of a large mahogany table to Nelson Garne, aged only sixty-three. Ernest Jeffs was still the buyer aged seventy-one.

All letters were still written in pencil with carbon copies on specially printed pads. A small typewriter had been bought in the 1930sbut no typist was employed. It was not until Frank Wilkinson returned from the war that anyone could use it, he having taught himself to type while convalescing in the army.

Changes now came about quickly; Frank Wilkinson was made a director in March 1952, since he was doing the bulk of the management. Then in November 1952 Nelson’s eldest daughter, Pamela’s husband, Keith Bodman, was made a director. He was an executive of Barclays Bank. Alan Hewer, Austin’s son, became a director in 1955.

In the meanwhile Nelson bough a large house at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire. His sister, Ethel and her husband had bought a house here in 1938 and the whole family had always gone there for holidays. So Willy was moved to Milford and Nelson retired there. Nelson’s daughter, Topsy and her husband, Lt Col Leslie Norris also retired there.

In 1953 Willy Garne, Austn Hewer and Ernest Jeffs all died the same year, each having spent their entire life in the service of Burford Brewery.

When Nelson died in 1958, Frank Wilkinson, who had become managing director in 1953, ran the business for the next eleven years single-handed with Keith Bodman calling in from time to time.

Finally in April 1969 Wadworth & Co. Ltd of Devizes acquired the share capital of Garne and Sons Ltd, which was owned by Mrs Nelson Garne, A V Hewer, K Bodman, Mrs Bodman, Esme Nesbitt and F K Wilkinson. Brewing continued for six months more until in September 1969 it finally stopped, thus ending one hundred and seventy years of brewing Burford by one of the smallest breweries in the country; ninety years being in Garne hands.

The brewery was thereafter used as a bottle store and the nine tied houses changed their signs from Garnes to Wadworth & Co. Ltd. Port and sherry though was still sold with the Garne label.

The great-grandson of George Garne, the founder of the brewery, is Douglas’ only son, Richard, the writer of this history, who having married Will Garne of Aldsworth’s fourth daughter, Barbara, and managed a large Cotswold farm is in a position to set down this record.