John Wright & Co Ltd: The Perth Brewery by Charlie McMaster
John Wright & Co Ltd: The Perth Brewery by Charlie McMaster
(From Brewery History Society Journal, no.50, December 1986)
The Perth Brewery was established at least as far back as 1786, and possibly dates back to the 1600s or even earlier. It is known for certain that in 1786, William Wright, a merchant of Perth, and Alexander Ritchie, a maltman, formed the Perth Brewing Company and feued [leased] some of the Town Burgage lands, in order to operate a brewery on the spot. The land in question had previously belonged to the ancient Blackfriars Monastery, and included a well of great antiquity which provided an excellent supply of very pure brewing water.
The venture prospered exceedingly, and when William Wright died in 1810, he was succeeded by his nephew John Wright, who by 1835 had become the sole surviving partner and proprietor of the concern, and from whom the latter-day company took its name. In 1842, John Wright took his brewer Robert Currie into partnership and a ten-year agreement was signed, under which the partnership traded as Wright & Currie.
However, John Wright died in June 1849, leaving no family, and was succeeded by his nephew John McGrouther, a writer (solicitor) of Dunblane. McGrouther entered into partnership with Robert Currie, trading as Wright, Currie & Co, until the latter's death in July 1852, when McGrouther continued as sole partner under the name of John Wright & Co, until his own death in April 1859. His widow continued the business, taking into partnership one Nathaniel Watt. Watt died in 1870, and was succeeded by Duncan Robertson Irvine, who became sole partner, but the firm, still trading as John Wright & Co, ran into financial difficulties, and part-ownership was transferred to one of its major creditors, the London hop merchants Biddell & Co.
In October 1885, the Perth Brewery was sold to a new partnership, that of Robert Nimmo, a banker from Bo'ness in West Lothian, and Robert Wallace, a former brewer at the long-established Bass Crest Brewery in Alloa (Robert Meiklejohn & Sons). Under this new partnership, the business, which was still trading as John Wright & Co, expanded greatly. To the long-standing business of brewing and malting was added the bottling of other beers and stouts, notably Burton ales and London & Dublin stouts, and of cyders and mineral waters. The Perth Brewery itself was extensively reconstructed, with the erection of a new brewhouse and maltings, and the construction of a new office block facing onto North Methven Street, this being part of a tenement which also made provision for the housing of brewery workers. A modest export trade in stout to the West Indies was commenced, and just prior to the First World War the company acquired its own aerated-water manufactory with the purchase of the Springwells plant in Dunkeld.
The First World War dealt Wright's, in common with other brewers, a heavy blow. Output, gravity and raw material restrictions resulted in the cessation of the export trade. The post-war world recession set in and the domestic market shrank considerably. In January 1920, Mr Robert Nimmo jnr became a partner in the firm, and in 1925, Mr Alexander Wallace, son of Robert Wallace, became likewise. In that latter year, 1925, it was decided to convert the firm into a private limited company under the title of John Wright & Co (Perth) Ltd.
In 1926, a major acquisition was made, when Perth's other brewery, the South Inch Brewery of Muir & Martin & Co, was taken over. This brewery had been established in 1815, and had a reputation for the quality of its strong ale. The sole partner, Mr David Martin, joined the board of Wrights. Within a short period of time, the South Inch Brewery was closed and production of their leading beers, Martins Strong Ale, Light Ale and Red Label Stout, were transferred to the Perth Brewery, where they continued in production for many years subsequently. Mr David Martin joined Wrights as Head Brewer, taking over from Mr R B Wallace who had retired.
The Dunkeld mineral water factory was closed in 1931, and production transferred to the Perth Brewery. Meanwhile, the firm of John Wright & Co Ltd had built up a sizeable trade factoring beers for other brewers, including McEwans, Tennents, Fowlers, Watneys and Carlsberg. Bass Red Triangle and Worthington naturally-conditioned beers were bottled, along with Guinness, Barclay Perkins Stout and Whiteway's Cyder. Some bottling was also carried out for Watney, Combe & Reid Ltd.
Mr R B Wallace died in 1935, and Mr Robert Nimmo snr in 1943. Mr Robert Nimmo jnr, who had become Lord Provost of Perth in 1935 (as John Wright had been before him), became Chairman and Managing Director, and Mr Alex Wallace, Company Secretary. The former was knighted for his public services in 1944. It was expected that Mr David Martin would continue as Head Brewer for many years, but he died suddenly in 1948. His son, Mr D Macrae Martin, became a non-executive director. Mr David Martin was succeeded as Head Brewer by Mr R W Nimmo, Sir Robert Nimmo's son, who after undergoing pupil brewer training at J & J Morison's Commercial Brewery in Edinburgh, qualified as a brewer from Heriot-Watt College in 1950.
In 1952, the Perth firm of Thomson, Craik & Co Ltd, beer bottlers and aerated water manufacturers, became a wholly owned subsidiary of John Wright & Co Ltd. Mr W Scott of Thomson, Craik Ltd joined Wright's board; and under the takeover a measure of rationalisation was introduced, with Thomson, Craik taking over responsibility for mineral water production, while Wrights concentrated on beer bottling and factoring.
Post World War Two, two main types of bulk beer were introduced, Light (1030 degrees gravity) and Heavy (1041 degrees gravity], along with some seven types of beer for bottling: Export Ale, XXX Stout, Sweet Stout, Pale Ale, Dinner Ale and Brown Ale, together with Martins Strong Ale. Stout was also sold for many years, until after the Second World War, in five-gallon stone jars. Wrights were the first brewers in the country to produce a Sweet Stout. This, first introduced in the early 1950s, was a brewed stout (in fact XXX Stout) heavily primed with refined Australian honey. Dinner Ale and a low gravity beer were produced for a while after the end of the war, specially for Dundee and Tayside, where it was sold in pint bottles. Wrights Export Ale won a Prize Medal at the Brewers Exhibition in 1951. Wrights Brown Ale in bottle was popular, and a reciprocal trading agreement was entered into with Geo. Mackay & Co Ltd of Edinburgh and Fowlers of Prestonpans, whereby in return for taking some of their products, these companies would stock Wright's Brown Ale in their managed houses. Wrights themselves had been acquiring managed houses and by the mid-1950s owned about twenty, mostly situated locally but with some as far away as Dundee and Arbroath. The brewery meanwhile was re-equipped in the mid-1950s, some of the equipment being purchased second-hand from the defunct Dumbarton brewing firm of Gillespie, Sons & Co Ltd after brewing had ceased at their Crown Brewery in late 1952. Keg beers were produced from the mid-1950s, using an open-tank pasteuriser and ten- and eleven-gallon stainless steel containers purchased second-hand from Guinness.
By the late 1950s, there was a wind of change sweeping through the Scottish brewing industry. Stagnant beer sales throughout the 1950s coupled with the cost of buying into tied properties saddled many brewers with heavy debts, and there was substantial over-capacity in the industry. There were tenuous moves to attract Wrights into becoming part of a grouping of other independent Scottish brewers, including Calders of Alloa and Ballingalls of Dundee, but this was rejected. Most of the twenty-odd Scottish brewery companies extant in the 1950s succumbed to takeover offers from larger groupings in the years 1959-1961, and in September of the latter year, Wrights accepted an undisclosed cash-plus-shares offer from Vaux & Associated Breweries Ltd of Sunderland, joining Steel Coulson & Co Ltd, Thos. Usher & Sons Ltd and Lorimer & Clark Ltd as other Scottish constituent companies of Vaux. As a result of the takeover, Sir Robert Nimmo joined the board of Thomas Usher & Sons Ltd.
At the time of the takeover, Wrights employed some one hundred persons in all, some thirty at the brewery itself and the rest in the subsidiary companies or in the managed houses. In the short term, the takeover resulted in more work for Wrights, who were delegated to carry out all factoring of other companies' products, and all Guinness bottling for the whole of the Scottish operation of Vaux. In addition, following the takeover and closure of Morison's Commercial Brewery in Edinburgh in 1960, Wrights had held the Scottish agency for Barclay Perkins Stout, and this was actually being brewed under licence at the Perth Brewery.
Mr Alexander Wallace retired in March 1962 and Sir Robert Nimmo in June 1964. Vaux meanwhile had reluctantly decided to concentrate their Scottish production on the Park Brewery at St Leonards in Edinburgh (Ushers), as the constricted site of the Perth Brewery, hemmed in by other buildings and by the Perth barracks of the Black Watch, meant that there was little room for expansion. Also, access was an increasing problem. Brewing ceased at the Perth Brewery in mid-1964, and after a short while the brewery closed completely, bottling of beers being transferred to the Glover Street plant of Thomson, Craik & Co Ltd. Most of the brewery staff were also absorbed by Thomson Craik.
At the time of its closure in 1964, the Perth Brewery was the most northerly surviving brewery in Britain as well as being, in brewing terms, one of the smallest. Brewing capacity was in the region of 240 barrels per week. For many years until well after the Second World War, much of the apparatus in the brewery was driven by a venerable horizontal steam engine, but this was supplemented in the 1950s by electrically driven machinery, including electric water pumps, wort pumps and an electric drive to the mashing machine. Water was pumped from the brewery's 180 feet deep artesian well to the cold and hot liquor tanks, the latter served by a Penman boiler fitted with a Prior mechanical stoker. The malt was all made on the premises, the maltings consisting of two twenty-five quarter malt floors served by two single-floor kilns, all the barley being locally grown, the favourite variety being Ymer, a little seen variety nowadays. The maltings had spare capacity, and toll malting and grain-drying was carried out for local distillers and grain merchants. The barley malt was fed through a Porteous mill, bought second-hand from Gillespies at Dumbarton, into a single mash-tun of approximately eight quarters capacity. This fed into a single open direct-coal-fired copper of forty barrels capacity, and a cast-iron hopback with gunmetal straining plates. The hopped wort was then pumped to a cast-iron open cooler, and then to six circular fermenting vessels, four 44-barrel FVs constructed by Macleans of Alloa from New Zealand pine, and two original 25-barrel vessels. Hand-skimming of the yeast was carried out. The beer was then despatched to the conditioning tanks, consisting of four E M P glass-lined tanks and two A P V aluminium tanks, all of 21-barrel capacity. Beer for bottling went through a three-chamber Pontifex chiller, through a Carlson sheet filter (also bought from Gillespies) to a Pontifex filler served by two Flower crowning machines and two Purdy labelling machines.
Water for cask-washing and the boiler was drawn from a lade [watercourse] adjacent to the brewery. There was a cooperage on the site, and after the Second World War a small fleet of motor lorries replaced the earlier horse-drawn drays. The lorries were mostly standard Albion 'Chieftain' models, but there was also an Austin lorry for a while, and a Karrier 'Bantam' low-loader for local deliveries. (In fact, an American Garner Lorry had been purchased for the Dunkeld aerated water plant as early as the First World War.)
Today there is little left of the Perth Brewery. Sir Robert Nimmo died in 1977, and his son, R W Nimmo, after a spell as tied trade director with Ushers, moved to become a restaurateur and licensee in Edinburgh. Today, a splendid mirror depicting the Perth Brewery, and which for many years hung in his father's office, adorns the wall of Bob Nimmo' s licenced house in Jock's Lodge, Edinburgh. In Perth, following the closure of the brewery, the site was acquired by Perth Town Council, who demolished the buildings to make way for a ring road which was eventually cancelled. Subsequently, houses and a medical centre were built on the site. John Wright's portrait hangs in Perth Art Gallery, but with the closure of the brewery to which he gave his name, commercial brewing died out in Perthshire, after nearly five hundred years.