Whitbread Brewery

Closed brewery
52 Chiswell Street EC1Y 4SD (City of London, Islington)
First sold beer: by 1686 (as King’s Head)
Brewing ceased: 1976

The earliest record of brewing at what became Whitbread is from 1686, when a Mr Bowes was making beer at the Kings Head Tavern, just inside the City of London on the southwest corner of Chiswell Street and Silk Street, then known as Grub Street. But it would be some decades before the Whitbread name became associated with the site.

Samuel Whitbread (1720-96), born in Cardington, Bedfordshire, was only 16 when in 1736 he apprenticed himself to John Wightman, then master of the Brewers’ Company, who likely brewed at a site known as Pye Corner, Smithfield, on what’s now the junction of Cock Lane and Giltspur Street (EC1A 9DD). This was famous as the location where the Great Fire of London stopped in 1666, as still commemorated by the Golden Boy statue in a niche on the northwest corner.

Six years later, Whitbread went into partnership with brothers Thomas and Godfrey Shewell at the Goat brewhouse at 88 Old Street, on the southwest corner of Whitecross Street (EC1V 9HU). This brewery was likely founded by a Mr Bucknall sometime before 1692 and had been operated by the Shewells since at least 1741.

Whitbread and the Shewells brewed porter here, with a separate brewhouse for ales, possibly dating from a couple of decades earlier, on the other side of Old Street at the corner with what’s now Central Street, formerly Brick Lane (EC1V 9HX). But it was porter that everyone wanted, prompting Whitbread and Thomas Shewell to seek a site where they could brew much more of it.

In 1749 they bought the then-derelict Kings Head and adjacent properties, only a short walk south from the Goat, and began creating what was likely the world’s first purpose-built porter brewery. Opened in 1750, the Chiswell Street brewery was by 1758 the biggest porter producer in Britain, with an output of 106,000 hl a year. That year, the facilities began expanding onto the north of Chiswell Street, just outside the City in Finsbury: the boundary with the London Borough of Islington still runs along the street.

The Goat closed once Chiswell Street opened, but brewing was later revived there. By 1774 it was operated by an ex-Whitbread brewer as More & Co, and by 1844 it was known as the Scottish brewery. Around 1890 it was absorbed by Watney and closed.

Back in Chiswell Street, Shewell retired in 1761 and Whitbread subsequently bought out his shares, becoming sole owner, as well as branching out into politics as an MP for Bedfordshire from 1768. By 1796, the year of his death, the brewery’s success had swelled to break further records, as brewing historian Peter Mathias recounted in 1959:

‘In 1796, Samuel Whitbread brewed, for the first time in any brewery in the world, over 200,000 barrels [327,320 hl, 57.6 million pints] of porter in a single season. This feat involved raw material costs of perhaps £200,000 [£17.9 million in 2023 prices], the upkeep of a plant which, with stocks, was worth over half a million pounds [£44.75 million], maintaining over 100 horses, and holding to account 500 publicans or more, and perhaps 1,000 other customers, for business which represented nearly thirty million retail transactions (at one quart) from a single unit of production.’

The celebrated Porter Tun Room was built between 1776-84 after fire destroyed its predecessor, at a scale sufficient to house the increasingly large vats used for maturing the beer, with a floor area of 778 square metres and the exposed timbers of a king-post roof, the widest unsupported timber span in London after Westminster Hall, over 18 m above.

Even more remarkable were the vaults below, conceived by Whitbread as a more efficient and oxygen-proof alternative to the tuns: vast watertight cisterns lined with a special cement capable of resisting the beer’s acidity, applied by ship’s caulkers, with a total capacity of 20,000 hl or almost 3.4 million pints.

The brewery was an early adopter of steam power, ordering its first engine in 1784. Microbiology pioneer Louis Pasteur (1822-95) visited in 1871, and impressed staff by using his microscope to spot a spoilage organism in a sample of a yeast culture which, it turned out, had already been identified as troublesome and taken out of use. The company subsequently invested in its own microscope.

Inevitably tastes moved on and Whitbread diversified into other styles of beer, with a fresher ‘running’ mild accounting for 10% of production by 1839. Bottling activities expanded in 1870 with the launch of a new plant not far away in Grays Inn Road (closed 1965). The last of the famous tuns was removed in 1900, though porter production, now by different methods and at declining strengths, continued until 1940.

Whitbread’s expansion was also fuelled by takeovers and mergers. Prior to World War II it absorbed at least 10 other brewing businesses, beginning in 1812 with Martineau & Bland of the Lambeth Brewery, founded in 1783: brewing at that site ceased but was later revived independently until the brewery was eventually taken over and closed by Manns.

Other Greater London acquisitions were Nicholl’s Anchor Brewery, Lewisham (founded c1800, bought and closed 1891, used as a bottling and distribution facility until 1984 and demolished 1987); Gripper Brothers Bell Brewery, Tottenham (founded 1760, bought and closed 1896, continued as a depot until mid-1985); Matthews and Canning Anchor Brewery, Chelsea (founded 1829, bought 1899, closed 1907); Jones & Co (Bromley Steam Brewery), Bromley Common (founded c1840, bought and closed 1901); Notting Hill Brewery (founded c1855, closed 1920 and later demolished with pub estate bought by Whitbread); and Forest Hill Brewery Co (founded by 1867, bought and closed 1923, converted to a dairy and later demolished).

Another significant pre-war purchase was Mackeson & Co in Hythe, Kent, founded in 1669 and noted for a pioneering sweet stout with added lactose, launched in 1909. This was initially sold to Simonds of Reading (later bought and closed by Courage) in 1920, and sold on to Jude Hanbury & Co of Canterbury in 1929, which in turn was bought by Whitbread the same year. The Mackeson brewery remained in production until 1968 when its flagship brand was switched to the former Tennant Brothers site in Sheffield, of which more below.

In the 1950s the brewery launched the so-called ‘Whitbread Umbrella’ in response to the wave of mergers then sweeping the industy, buying shares in smaller regional breweries and obtaining favourable trading agreements on the promise of protecting them from hostile takover. The umbrella might have shielded them from other brewers but not from Whitbread itself, as by the early 1970s most had been absorbed.

Whitbread bought and either immediately or eventually closed over 30 other breweries between 1946 and 1989, including major regional names like keg ale pioneer Flowers (Luton and Stratford-upon-Avon, 1961), Nimmo (Castle Eden, 1963), Lacon (Great Yarmouth, 1965), Rhymney (1966), Fremlins (Maidstone, 1967), Strong (Romsey, 1969), Brickwoods (Portsmouth, 1971) and Boddingtons (Manchester, 1989). From Tennant Brothers of Sheffield, bought in 1961 and closed in 1993, it inherited another nationally recognised bottled brand, Gold Label Barley Wine. At its peak in the 1980s it owned almost 8,000 pubs and brewing and distribution facilities in Belgium as well as the UK.

After closing Flowers in Luton in 1969, Whitbread replaced it the same year with a massive new brewery at Leagrave nearby, claimed to be the first major new-build brewery in the UK for over 30 years and the largest fully automated brewery in Europe. It produced only keg, bottled and canned beer, not only Whitbread beers but mainland European lager brands brewed under license like Heineken and Stella Artois. Two other large new plants focused primarily on lager production followed, at Samlesbury, Lancashire, in 1972 and Magor, South Wales, in 1979. The Luton plant was decommissioned in 1984 after only 15 years in production.

In the 1970s, Whitbread’s London facilities brewed a version of cask Trophy Bitter (3.6%), which was also brewed, sometimes to different recipes, at most of the group’s other sites, as well as cask Best Mild (2.8%). Alongside these were flagship keg bitter Tankard (3.9%), and bottled Light Ale (around 3%), Forest Brown Ale (around 3.2%, though some of this had been contracted to Truman), Pale Ale (around 3.5%), Brewmaster Export Pale Ale (4.8%) and, possibly, Gold Label barley wine (11.3%). Pale Ale was the last beer brewed at Chiswell Street in 1976, before the brewery closed for good.

Where are they now?

Following the closures, some of the brewery buildings continued in use as the corporate headquarters until 2005. But by then Whitbread was no longer a brewer. Having diversified into broader hotel and catering interests, it found this side of its business more profitable. It had a longstanding trading relationship with Stella brewer Interbrew of Leuven, Belgium, created in 1987 through the merger of two major Belgian brewing group, Artois and Piedbœuf. So in 2000, Whitbread sold its brewing interests, including its breweries and brands, to Interbrew, which also acquired Bass the same year (see Charrington).

Interbrew merged in 2004 with Brazilian brewing giant AmBev to create InBev, the biggest brewing company in the world. In 2008, InBev bought major US brewer Anheuser-Busch of St Louis, Missouri, to become Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev). Anheuser-Busch was already active in London, having leased the Stag brewery in Mortlake from Courage to produce a regional version of its flagship Budweiser brand. This was later fully acquired by AB InBev and closed in 2015. AB InBev continues to operate the Salmesbury and Magor sites.

Whitbread continues as a hospitality company today, owning the Premier Inn hotel and Beefeater restaurant chains among others. It owned Costa Coffee between 1995 and 2019, when it was sold to Coca-Cola.

The Whitbread brands have largely disappeared, though Pale Ale has remained intermittently available in Belgium, likely brewed by AB InBev at Leuven or Jupille. In 2016, a company called Pioneer Brewing licensed the brand and worked with Windsor & Eton Brewery to relaunch the beer as a 4% cask or 4.6% bottled ale, but it’s since been withdrawn again.

AB InBev revived Flowers IPA (3.4%) and Best Bitter (4.5%) in keg and occasionally cask in the 2000s, contracting them to the Badger brewery in Blandford St Mary, Dorset. Mackeson Stout (2.8%) is still available in cans, possibly produced at Hydes in Salford. Canned Gold Label, now only 7.5%, remains available too, produced by AB InBev in Salmesbury, along with Boddingtons Bitter, now in canned and nitrokeg form only.

Things to see

Though part of the site was demolished, several historic brewery buildings still stand in Chiswell Street, in what’s now the Brewery Conservation Area, largely dating from various rebuilds in the second half of the 19th century. Most are at least Grade II-listed.

The group on the south (City) side, on the original site, are still owned by Whitbread and mainly used for hospitality. Most obvious is the Entrance Wing (52 Chiswell Street EC1Y 4SA) with its carriage arch through to the brewery yard: the arch and the bay above date from around 1890-91, while the bays to each side are earlier, around 1867. The buildings, which also have some notable interiors, were used as offices from the 1890s onwards, and have since been converted to the luxury Montcalm hotel.

A terrace of late 18th century brown brick houses stretches to the left along Chiswell Street (nos 53-55), terminating in a pub building of the same period at no 56 on the corner with Milton Street, though the frontage of this was substantially altered perhaps in the 1870s. It was once known as the St Pauls Tavern but was closed in 2008 and reopened in 2011 as an upmarket restaurant, the Chiswell Street Dining Rooms, by the ETM Group who also own the Long Arm brewpub not far away. A range of yellow brick brewery buildings perhaps from the 1870s continues round the corner along Milton Street, with tall entrance arches at each end.

To the right of the Entrance Wing, fronted by railings, is the Partners’ House (47 Chiswell Street EC1Y 4SB). The only Grade II*-listed building in the group, it’s a grand four storey early 18th century red brick house which predates the brewery but was later used as a residence for the owners and is now offices. Immediately right of this (no 49), on the corner of Silk Street, is the Kings Head, now known as the Jugged Hare. This was the site of the original brewery, though the current building is late 19th century, with 20th century additions. It closed in 2008 but was reopened by ETM under its current name in 2012. A later brewery building in red brick and granite, from 1904, is round the corner in Silk Street, next door to the pub.

It’s usually possible to walk through the main entrance arch, with its war memorial plaque on the right, into the yard behind, where many of the buildings now form part of the Brewery events and conference centre. Straight ahead is a clock in a block dated 1912. Immediately right, an enclosed iron footbridge built in 1892 connects both sides of the yard at first floor level. The octagonal building to the left is the entrance to the Porter Tun Room, which is now used for events and isn’t usually open to the public except occasionally on Doors Open Days. Beyond it, now fronted by a conservatory, is the former sugar room.

The brewery’s ‘North Side’ once stretched as far as Errol Street, covering around 1.2 ha, and is still linked to the South Side by an underground passage, now closed off. Much of it was demolished and redeveloped in the 1980s, but the front yard remains, surrounded by brewery buildings from 1870 behind a gated entrance almost opposite the South Side arch. The gates were originally wood but were replaced by the current iron ones in 1986. Immediately left of these and forming part of the same range of buildings is the Brewer’s House (no 41), with a double front door under a broad arch.

The yard is now known as Sundial Court (38 Chiswell Street EC1Y 4SB) after the 1774 sundial visible at the far end, not in its original position but moved here during the 1870s rebuild. An arch below this, blocked off in 1986, once gave access to an inner yard. The buildings to the left of the Brewer’s House are older: no 42, next door, is early 19th century, while the ‘Georgian Terrace’, nos 43-46, dates from 1774. All were once used as accommodation for brewery staff. The site is now offices, flats and student accommodation.

Some other remnants of Whitbread’s brewing days are still visible in London. The distinctive southern gatehouse of the former Bell Brewery, surmounted by a Whitbread clock and with the outline of the brewery yard obvious behind it, is also now Grade II-listed (667 High Road N17 0AE). The entrance arch of Matthews and Canning, topped by an anchor, stands next door to the former brewery tap, the Builders Arms (13 Britten Street SW3 3TY).

The Forest Hill Brewery has completely vanished, though a beautiful 1920s painted tile advertisement for its beers is visible on a wall at 2 Tintern Street SW4 7PZ: likely the building once housed an off-license. The only legacy of the Bromley Steam Brewery is the street name, Brewery Road (BR2 8BF).

Updated 20 May 2024.

More London breweries
Closed London breweries