Also known as Romford Brewing Co.
Includes information for Taylor Walker.
Closed brewery
Star Brewery, 19 High Street, Romford RM1 1JU (Havering)
First sold beer: 1708
Ceased brewing: 1993
Closed brewery
Barley Mow Brewery, Newell Street E14 8HZ (Tower Hamlets)
First sold beer: c1735
Ceased brewing: 1960
Romford was a rural Essex market town in 1708 when George Cardon started brewing at the Star Inn. In 1799 the business was bought by Edward Ind in partnership with John Grosvenor, who later sold his share to John Smith.
It was Smith’s son Henry who, along with his brother-in-law, head brewer John Turner, quit the firm in 1845 to become a partner at the Griffin brewery in Chiswick, creating Fuller Smith & Turner. C E Coope joined the firm in 1856, when it became Ind Coope, the name under which it was registered as a limited company in 1886.
By 1889, the town centre site had expanded to 16 ha, with 400 staff and an annual output of almost 330,000 hl, sourcing water from eight wells and delivered by 62 horses and 40 drays and carts as well as trains using over 3 km of private railway sidings.
Like several other London breweries in the mid-19th century, Ind Coope built a satellite brewery in Burton upon Trent to take advantage of the local water, which was more suitable for brewing pale ale than London water. The substantial site on Station Street opened in 1856.
In 1934, Ind Coope took over its Burton neighbour Allsopp & Sons to become Ind Coope & Allsopp, a substantial concern with an estate of around 1,800 pubs. Founded in the 1740s, Allsopp was a venerable Burton name widely credited with first introducing pale ale brewing to the town, but had found itself faced with financial and management difficulties, described by two influential brewing historians as ‘the most recklessly run brewery in England’. Ind Coope inherited what became its signature red hand logo from Allsopp.
In 1959 the company, now once again known simply as Ind Coope, took over Taylor Walker in Limehouse E14 (see below), closing it the next year. A year later it became the heart of one of the Big Seven breweries by merging with Tetley Walker in Leeds and Ansells in Birmingham to create Ind Coope Tetley Ansell. Renamed Allied Breweries in 1963, it was the largest drinks company in Europe and the second biggest beer producer in UK, owning 11% of the nation’s pubs.
In 1978, the parent group merged with catering and baking company J Lyons & Co, renaming itself Allied Lyons in 1981. A restructure in 1980 saw the Star assigned to a new subsidiary, the Romford Brewing Company. By now the site had been reduced to just over 10 ha, with 870 staff producing 800,000 hl a year. Allied continued to develop the brewery throughout the decade, and by 1987 it had an annual capacity of 1.6 million hl. But even so Romford remained a junior partner to Burton.
In the early 1970s, the Romford brewery produced cask mild (~3.1%) and bitter (~3.8%) for outlets in southern England, sometimes branded Superdraught. From 1979, it also produced cask bitters under the names of breweries Ind Coope had closed down, in line with Allied’s policy of reapplying these names to some of its pubs in the hope of making them appear more ‘local’.
These beers, all around 3.5%, were branded Benskins (Watford, founded 1722, bought 1957, closed 1972), Friary Meux (Guildford, founded 1865, bought 1964, closed 1969) and Taylor Walker (see below), although it’s possible that Benskins and Friary Meux, at least, were the same beer under different badges. In 1986, all Ind Coope cask production was centralised in Burton, with Romford shifting its focus to lager-ale hybrid Long Life (4.5%) in keg and can, originally developed here in 1956.
Ind Coope’s two best known brands were of Burton origin and were always brewed there. Double Diamond originated as a primarily bottled premium pale ale at Allsopp in 1876, and was one of Britain’s best-selling bottled beers by the late 1950s, when it was brewed at around 4.5%. Ind Coope subsequently marketed it as their main keg bitter, its strength reduced to around 3.6%. The much-admired Draught Burton Ale (4.8%) was launched in 1976 in response to renewed consumer interest in cask beer. Despite its name, it wasn’t a historic ‘Burton ale’, which was a darker style dating back to the Baltic trade of the late 18th century, but a cask version of a pale ale based on a 1950s Double Diamond recipe.
There’s more about the history of Ind Coope here.
Where are they now?
In 1993, Allied began preparing for a further merger with international drinks company Domecq, originally a Spanish-based sherry firm, to create Allied Domecq, and sold 50% of its brewing interest to Carlsberg. The Star was deemed surplus to requirements and promptly closed. Carlsberg bought the rest of the shares in 1997 and sold the pubs to Punch in 1999, by which time the ‘local’ cask brands had been discontinued.
The managed pubs passed to the Spirit group in 2011 and were later sold to Greene King. The Burton brewery was sold to Bass in 1998 and is still in operation as part of Molson Coors. Most of the brands remain with Carlsberg. Long Life, despite its name, was retired in the 1990s as a regular brand, though occasionally emerged in the 2000s from Carlsberg’s lager plant in Northampton. Double Diamond remains available as a 2.8% keg beer aimed at clubs, perhaps brewed at Banks’s in Wolverhampton.
Following the sale of the Burton plant, Draught Burton Ale was contract brewed, most recent at J W Lees in Manchester, but was discontinued in 2015. There are a few reconstructed versions around, most notably Burton Bridge DBA (4.8%), introduced in 2015 at a brewery founded by ex-Bass employees who were involved with developing the original.
Curiously, well-known Scottish multinational craft brewery BrewDog bought the Allsopp trademark, including the red hand, from Carlsberg in 2017 but did little with it. In 2021, it was sold on to Jamie Allsopp, a descendant of the original brewery’s founders. He relaunched the brand in 2022, initially through cuckoo brewing.
Things to see
By the time it closed, most of the Star brewery’s buildings were recent, though several historic buildings fronting onto the High Street survived, including the main entrance, a brick arch once leading to the brewery yard, and a boiler house with chimney. These buildings now house the Havering Museum (19 High Street RM1 1JU), which includes numerous brewery-related items among its collection. The rest of the site was demolished, replaced with the Brewery shopping centre and car park.
Taylor Walker
Several sources claim that Taylor Walker originated as the Stepney Brewery, owned in 1730 by James Salmon and Richard Hare, and was later relocated to the site in Limehouse where it continued to brew until 1960. But Martyn Cornell says there’s no evidence for this, suggesting that the brewery was likely always on the Limehouse site and confusion has arisen over place names. Limehouse was part of Stepney parish until 1709 and the names continued to be used imprecisely: for example today’s Limehouse rail and DLR station was opened as Stepney and only received its current name in 1987.
Salmon and Hare were likely brewing on the Limehouse site, then known as the Ship or Ship House Brewery, by 1735 and certainly by 1740. The brewery, which initially specialised in porter, appears on a map drawn around 1745, between Narrow Street, then Fore Street, and Ropemakers Field, a street that has since partly disappeared. The brewery tap was at 78 Fore Street, later renamed and renumbered 133 Narrow Street, known since at least 1805 as the Barley Mow.
Richard Hare’s son Robert emigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1773 and started a porter brewery there, sometimes claimed to be the first such brewery in the Americas.
John Vickris Taylor became a partner in 1792, and in 1816 his future son-in-law Isaac Walker joined him. By the 1880s the firm was known as Taylor Walker, and in 1889 added a substantial additional brewhouse, named the Barley Mow after the pub, north of Ropemakers Field, with the main entrance to the site eventually located on Newell Street (previously known as Church Row) by the junction of today’s Oak Lane. The business was registered as a joint stock company in 1907, becoming a public limited company in 1927. It ceased brewing porter in the 1930s.
The brewery grew through acquisition in the 20th century. Its purchases included John Furze, Whitechapel, founded 1838, bought and closed 1901; Highbury Brewery, Holloway Road, founded 1740, bought and closed 1912; Smith, Garrett & Co of the Bow Brewery, successor to Hodgson’s, founded in 1752, and renowned in the mid-19th century as the leading exporter of pale ale to India, bought and closed 1927 and demolished 1933 to make way for social housing; Glenny’s, Barking, founded 1864, bought and closed 1930; Cannon, St John Street, Clerkenwell, founded 1720, closed 1955; and the Westerham Black Eagle Brewery (Bushell, Watkins & Smith) in Kent, founded c1840, bought 1948 and remaining operational until after Taylor Walker’s own acquisition.
When it was taken over by Ind Coope in 1959, Taylor Walker had 1,360 pubs and off-licenses, including 650 in London, and was particulary noted for its bottled beer, including Cannon Stout (3.6%), inherited from the Clerkenwell brewery, and a pale ale exported to Belgium (5%). Its cask mainstay was Mainline Mild (3.5%). Brewing ceased in 1960 and the site was sold in 1961. Production continued at Westerham until 1965.
As mentioned above, the name made an unexpected reappearance in 1978 when Allied tried to improve the ‘local’ image of its pubs in southern England by rebranding them with names of breweries it had closed. Hundreds of London pubs were rebadged Taylor Walker, including some that had never belonged to the brewery, using the cannon logo inherited from the Cannon brewery in Clerkenwell. By 1980, these pubs were being supplied with a newly formulated Taylor Walker Bitter (3.5%) brewed in Romford, with production shifted to Burton by 1986. The practice ceased in 1999 when Allied sold its pub estate to Punch, but a few pubs still bear the legacy of this period.
Punch revived the name yet again in 2010 as a sub-brand for a selection of upmarket managed pubs, but it was dropped in 2015 when these pubs became part of the Greene King estate. Greene King has occasionally brewed a cask bitter branded Taylor Walker 1730 (4%) as a special.
Martyn Cornell’s piece on Taylor Walker.
Things to see: Taylor Walker
The brewery was entirely demolished in the mid-1960s, including the Barley Mow pub, and the site is now flats and green space, with the Limehouse Link road tunnel running beneath. Only street and building names recall its past: Barleycorn Way, the Barley Mow Veterans Club, Brewster House and Malting House. In 1989, when a Grade II-listed former customs house a short distance west along Narrow Street, beside the Thames at the entrance to Limehouse Basin, was converted to a pub, it initially revived the name Barley Mow. It’s since become a restaurant, Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen (44 Narrow Street E14 8DP).
Some remnants of Taylor Walker’s acquisitions are still visible. Part of the Cannon brewery can be seen at 156 St John Street EC1V 4LE, the arch in its attractive facade still giving access to the brewery yard with its clock; it continued in use as offices both for Taylor Walker and Allied though is now used as flats. Some of the Furze brewery buildings still stand at 33 Commercial Road E1 1LD, subsequently a warehouse for Johnnie Walker whisky but now converted to flats, student halls, retail and offices.
Though the Highbury brewery was demolished, its tap remains: it operated as brewpub the Flounder and Firkin between 1985 and 1999 and is now known as the Lamb (54 Holloway Road N7 8JL). Only the brewer’s house remains of the Westerham brewery, on the east corner of Black Eagle Close and the High Street (TN16 1RG), though a new Westerham Brewery was founded in 2004, using the old Black Eagle yeast strain.
Updated 14 May 2024.
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