London breweries 1971

By the end of 1971, there were 11 commercial breweries operating in London, none of them brewpubs. 6 were part of national groups (N), one part of a multinational (M). These breweries were:

1. Charrington Brewery (Bass Charrington N) E1, Tower Hamlets
2. Courage Brewery N SE1, Southwark
3. Fuller, Smith & Turner W4, Hounslow
4. Guinness Park Royal (Guinness M) NW10, Ealing
5. Ind Coope (Allied Breweries N) RM1, Havering
6. Mann Crossman & Paulin (Watney Mann N) E1, Tower Hamlets
7. Tolly Cobbold Walthamstow (Tolly Cobbold) E17, Waltham Forest, shortly to close
8. Truman Hanbury & Buxton (Grand Metropolitan) E1, Tower Hamlets
9. Watney Mann N SW14, Richmond upon Thames
10. Whitbread Brewery N EC1, City of London, Islington
11. Young & Co’s Brewery SW18, Wandsworth

I originally drew up this list just prior to the publication in 2015 of the second edition of London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, which listed 70 London breweries, since increased to over 100. I thought it would be interesting to look back to 1971 as that year is something of a turning point in British brewing.

The 1950s and 1960s had brought turbulent times to the industry, which was swept by ‘merger mania’ and the emergence of new national groups. The situation had stablised by the early 1970s, with the ‘Big Seven’ brewers (Allied, Bass, Courage, Guinness, Scottish & Newcastle, Watney and Whitbread) now firmly in control and well-advanced in their plans to supplant traditional cask ale with nationally marketed pasteurised keg ale and mediocre ‘Continental’ lager. All of these groups were in some way active in London.

But 1971 also saw sporadic resistance to the growing homogeneity of the brewing industry articulate itself through the foundation of the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale, soon to be renamed the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). This presaged a new and more self-conscious appreciation of beer both nationally and internationally, and the emergence of small scale commercial breweries in numbers not seen since the Victorian era. But in 1971 all that was still some years away – there had been almost no openings of new British breweries since the 1930s, though plenty of closures.

The total of 11 breweries in operation that year, soon to decline to 10, is much smaller than today’s, though around the same as in the mid-2000s before the current boom really took off. The complexion of these breweries, however, was very different indeed from today’s crop. All were much larger operations than is typical today: veteran London brewer Derek Prentice estimated that back then London brewers between them produced over 10 million hl a year, while in 2015 almost seven times the number of breweries barely managed 1.5 million hl.

All were well-established concerns, most tracing their origins back at least as far as the first industrial heyday of London brewing in the 18^th century. All but one shared the vertically integrated structure which was the norm in British breweries from the late 19^th century until the early 1990s, selling much of their output through their own pubs.

Today, nearly all London brewers are independently owned, but back in 1971 the national groups dominated the landscape. Courage, Watney Mann and Whitbread had grown from historic London breweries, while other London names were involved in the mergers that created Allied and Bass Charrington. All these companies had both breweries and extensive pub estates in London.

Dublin-based Guinness – the exception among big breweries as it owned no pubs – supplied southern England from its London subsidiary. The seventh of the ‘Big Seven’, Scottish and Newcastle, had no brewing connections in London but owned some prime pubs.

Truman’s was the sole surviving large scale independent from the golden age, but its ongoing struggle to retain that status was shortly to fail. Two much smaller independents, Fuller’s and Young’s, brewed largely for relatively localised pub estates.

All these breweries were standalone operations – there were then only a tiny handful of historic brewpubs left in the UK and this particular business model seems to have been abandoned in London even earlier than elsewhere, not to be restored until the Goose and Firkin opened in 1979 as the first example of what became a major resurgence in UK brewpubs.

Looking back across the upheavals of the intervening decades that brought about the completely transformed brewing landscape of today, it’s striking to note how much kinder history has been to the independents. Of the big brands brewed in London back then, Guinness is the only one that retains its familiarity and cachet today, though its production has once again been centralised in its home city of Dublin.

Fuller’s retained the same company structure and the same family ownership for many decades, becoming much bigger and establishing a national brand of its own, before selling its brewing interests to Asahi in 2019. Since the long-anticipated closure of Watney’s former Stag brewery in Mortlake at the end of 2015, Fuller’s is the only brewery on the 1971 list that has remained in continuous operation.

Young’s is still a familiar name on the London scene although the owning company has finally become a non-brewing pubco, with the brands produced by Carlsberg in Burton upon Trent, alongside those of Courage, the only major Big Seven brand of the day besides Guinness to retain a shred of credibility. Delightfully, Sambrook’s resumed commercial production on Young’s former Wandsworth site in 2021, retaining its status as the oldest documented continuous brewing site in the UK, if no longer holding the record for continuous commercial brewing.

In 2013, East London regained a brewery under the Truman name. Aside from ownership of the brand and considerable respect for the history and heritage there was no connection with the original brewery. Sadly, the company has since been forced to suspend brewing and to sell the Truman name.

I’m gradually adding lists for every year from 1971 onwards, so you’ll eventually be able to trace the fortunes of London’s breweries through the modern era of beer. You can check progress using the ‘year by year’ link below.

For definitions of a London brewery and for the current list, see the London breweries page.

⇦ 1970 | London breweries year by year | 1972 ⇨

Updated 21 May 2024.