Golding & Co
Golding & Co, Bat & Ball Brewery, Crampton Road, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Established c.1890 to brew for the private trade.
Premises renamed the Oak Brewery after the acquisition of the goodwill and private trade of Fox & Sons of Farnborough 1910.
Acquired by Hoare & Co. Ltd. from the Standard Brewery Co-operative Society 1912 and brewing ceased.
Premises used as a furniture repository until its demolition in the early 1970s.
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From Peter Moynihan's Kent notes:-
In March 1910 Mr Charles Campbell McLeod, Golding’s manager, applied to the Sevenoaks Magistrates for the granting of a retail licence; the application was refused. A newspaper story of the time states that “Ever since June 1909, Messrs Goldings have found great difficulty in coping with the increase in trade brought to them by the purchase of the goodwill and private trade of Messrs Fox & Sons of Farnborough. This trade, coupled with their own rapidly additional fermenting vessels were at once installed …. extensive plant and machinery for the quick and successful bottling of their beers was also installed, a duplicate boiler was added and these additions have just been completed by the erection of a new mash tun and grist case …. with a capacity of 15 quarters. The old mash tun which it replaced had a capacity of five quarters only and had necessitated continual brewings by day and by night”.
It is clear that William Humphrey Golding was no great shakes as a businessman, but where did the money come from to build the brewery in the first place?
And then to buy another brewery at Wrotham (Walter Morgan with two pubs) and further buy the trade and goodwill of Fox & Sons at Farnborough?
Well, he was the son of a prosperous hop grower, William Golding, proprietor of the 270 acre Leavers Farm at East Peckham. Leavers Oast still stands and the family home is now the Leavers Manor Hotel. William was a member of the Golding family of hop growers, one of whose antecedents in the mid-18th century identified a vigorous sport among his rows of Canterbury Whitebines, which he developed into the world-renowned Golding Hop variety. Family money then, William Humphrey's father died in 1902.
After he sold up to Hoare & Co. Ltd, I can find no further record of William Humphrey as a brewer; his later life seems to have involved infidelity and possible blackmail of a Baronet..... but that's another story! See:- William Humphrey Golding
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