Promoting an international beer culture that recognises and celebrates beers of quality, distinctiveness and local character, brewed with care and passion.
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
Also known at various times as Craft Academy and A Head in a Hat.
Brewpub no longer brewing 133 Dulwich Road SE24 0NG (Lambeth) florencehernehill.com First sold beer: September 2007 Ceased brewing: by end 2018
Also: Cock and Hen (now known as the Cock Tavern) Brewpub no longer brewing 360 North End Road SW6 1LY (Hammersmith & Fulham) First sold beer: April 2007 Ceased brewing: by end 2008
These two pubs played a role in the early stages of London’s current brewing renaissance, linking back to serial pub entrepreneur David Bruce, founder of the Firkin and Hedgehog and Hogshead brewpub chains, both of which had been active in London. In April 2007, he dipped his toe into the brewpub concept once again by installing a tiny brewery at the Cock and Hen pub in Fulham, then part of his Capital Pubs chain, co-founded with Clive Watson in 2000.
The experiment was repeated in September with a slightly bigger 8 hl brewery in what was formerly a big Irish pub called Ganleys opposite Brockwell Park at Herne Hill, now renamed the Florence. Cock and Hen brewer Tony Lennon at first covered both sites, though the Cock was later sold to Young’s and brewing discontinued.
Tony, who also played a key role in setting up the Euston Tap pub, moved on in November 2010. The Florence brewhouse remained unused until the following February, when Peter Haydon, a longstanding London brewer and beer writer who had been involved in setting up Meantime, moved in as brewer, initially on a profit share basis.
The sale of Capital to national brewer Greene King later that year prompted fears for the brewery’s future, which turned out to be unfounded when the new owner retained the pub’s identity, and its brewing activities, as part of its Metropolitan chain. In April 2012, Peter bought the kit and agreed to pay rent on the site, an unusual arrangement of one brewery operating from premises owned by another. As well as brewing Florence beers for the pub, he created his own brand, A Head in a Hat, focusing on historical recreations.
At the end of 2015, Peter decided to retire from brewing and sold the equipment back to Greene King. During 2016, it was rebranded as Craft Academy and was used intermittently, primarily as a training facility for its owners, with some beers sold in the pub, although Craft Academy beers sold more widely through the Greene King estate were from the main facility in Bury St Edmunds. By the end of 2018 it seems even these activities had ceased.
The brewhouse remained in place for some time, and before the lockdowns there was an aspiration to recruit a new brewer, restoring the Florence brand. But this never happened, and the kit was finally removed to create additional dining space when the pub was refurbished in April 2023.
David Bruce, meanwhile, continued his involvement with brewing, spending several years as owner of West Berkshire brewery: see the Firkin brewery page for a little more.
Earl of Essex, London N1, former home to Earls Brewery
Brewpub no longer brewing 25 Danbury Street N1 8LE (Islington) First sold beer: April 2013 Ceased brewing: December 2014
Beer-friendly independent chain Barworks reopened Islington’s Earl of Essex pub in July 2012 as part of its craft-focused Grace Land group, and added an 8 hl brewhouse the following year. Beers in cask and keg were sold in the pub with ambitions to supply other outlets too.
When the brewer left at the end of 2014, the kit fell dormant, and its revival was complicated by an infection problem in the pub cellar. Though this was subsequently solved, brewing remained suspended, with the owners eventually abandoning plans to revive it due to restricted space. The kit was subsequently removed and sold, and is currently at Holy Goat in Dundee. The pub continues to sell an excellent range of other people’s beer.
Grace Land revived its brewing activities on a much larger scale in August 2023 when it reopened the former London Fields brewery as Saint Monday.
Closed brewery 4 Leyton Studios, 15 Argall Avenue E10 7QE (Waltham Forest) First sold beer: November 2012 Ceased brewing: October 2013
A crowdfunded business that raised £15,000 online in 15 days, Brüpond produced keg and bottled beers aimed at “beer adventurers” from a 10 hl kit on a Leyton industrial estate. Brewer and founder David Brassfield was originally from Colorado and had previously been involved with small craft breweries in the US. The brewery struggled to maintain quality and despite a reformulation of the recipes in 2013 it didn’t see out the year, becoming the first but by no means the last of London’s failed crowdfunded brewing projects.
Brew Wharf, London SE1, one of the cradles of London’s brewing revival, since redeveloped.
Closed brewpub Brew Wharf Yard, Stoney Street SE1 9AD (Southwark) First sold beer: September 2005 Ceased brewing: May 2014
An upmarket brewpub under railway arches by Borough Market, Brew Wharf became one of the early pioneers of the current resurgence in London brewing. One of four bar-restaurants at food and drink visitor attraction Vinopolis, it was the creation of two successful London restaurateurs: Claudio Pulze, who was also behind the Cantina restaurant elsewhere in the complex, and Trevor Gulliver, of award-winning British eatery St John in Clerkenwell, a longtime supporter of beer with food. From the beginning, the venue boasted an 8 hl microbrewery, visible behind glass opposite the kitchen and intended to be considered an equal partner in gastronomic excellence.
In the early days, Brew Wharf produced a limited range of traditional British styles, but that all changed in Spring 2010 with the arrival of Phil Lowry, then manager of online beer shop beermerchants.com. He convinced the management that brewing brown bitters was not the best way to grab attention in a location a few seconds from pubs like the Rake and the Market Porter and just down the road from the newly-established Kernel brewery.
Phil brought in two fellow beer geeks and former home brewers: Steve Skinner, from Detroit, Michigan, who’d recently done a stint at Gadd’s in Ramsgate; and Angelo Scornera, born in Britain but brought up in Houston, Texas. A stream of unusual, experimental, boldly flavoured and internationally influenced beers followed, including numerous collaborations, all of them cask conditioned and sold almost exclusively on site.
More significant to the recent history of London brewing than the beers was Brew Wharf’s status as the birthplace of the London Brewers Alliance (LBA). In September 2010, Phil and Evin O’Riordain of the Kernel invited every brewery then operating in London to a dinner at Brew Wharf and were astonished to find 15 brewers turned up, including from big names like Fuller’s. All became founding members of the LBA, inspired by similar organisations in the US and elsewhere. This organisation has been enormously important in inspiring and supporting many of the breweries opened in the decade since, and increasing the overall quality and diversity of London beer. For a while, Brew Wharf was its unofficial base, hosting the first LBA festival in October 2011.
Phil and Steve attempted setting up a beer firm called Saints and Sinners with the intention of marketing some of the beers more widely, but Steve had returned to the US by 2011 and Phil found his time taken up elsewhere. Brewing continued for some years under Angelo and subsequent brewers, but the venue was sold early in 2014 and the new owners decided to let the brewhouse fall idle. It’s since been moved to the Breakwater brewery in Dover, Kent, also run by Phil.
The whole Vinopolis complex closed for redevelopment at the end of 2015 and since 2022 the arches have been part of Borough Yards, a cluster of upmarket shops, bars and restaurants.
Closed brewpub 1 Devonshire Square EC2M 4YP (City of London) First sold beer: March 2016 Ceased brewing: June 2019
Barbecue restaurant PittCue began as a sandwich stand under the Hammersmith Flyover, expanding to a small Soho restaurant and then to a much bigger site in pretty Devonshire Square in 2016. The new site included a new 8 hl brewhouse from AB UK overseen by head brewer Michaela Charles (formerly White), who had previously worked at Clarence & Fredericks/Volden and Head in a Hat, and occasionally cuckoo-brewed as Upstairs Brewing.
Beers under the AlphaBeta brand, named for the enzymes involved in mashing and the acids found in hops, were produced in cask and later keg mainly for in-house sales, with recipes designed to pair with the food menu. In 2018, Michaela worked with the British Museum on a fascinating project to recreate an ancient Egyptian beer.
Sadly the restaurant went into liquidation in 2019 and both it and the brewery closed. Michaela moved first to the Enefeld brewery and then Beerblefish. Jamie Berger, the original co-founder of PittCue who had subsequently sold it on, has bought back the brand although so far with little sign of the business re-emerging..
Closed brewery Original site: 29 Cheshire Gardens, Chessington KT9 2PR (Kingston upon Thames) Final site: Woodstock Avenue, Sutton SM3 9EF (Sutton) First sold beer: June 2012 Ceased brewing: early 2014
Founded by homebrewers Ben Owen and Alex Wilson with a 4 hl kit, this brewery launched a range of interesting bottled beers partly inspired by historic recipes in June 2012 but little over a year later brewing was suspended. An attempt to revive production at a home-based site in Sutton in 2013 proved equally short-lived.
A once-familiar bar mount for Watney’s notorious keg bitter Red Barrel.
This page covers the now-closed Stag Brewery at Mortlake as well as the also-defunct original Stag Brewery at Pimlico. For the more recent attempted revival of the Watney brand see Watneys Beer.
Closed breweries Stag Brewery Pimlico Brewer Street SW1E 5JD (Westminster) First sold beer: by 1641 Ceased brewing: 1959
Stag Brewery Mortlake Lower Richmond Road SW14 7ET (Richmond upon Thames) First sold beer: by 1765 Ceased brewing: December 2015
Combe & Co Woodyard Brewery, Old Brewers Yard, Shelton Street, WC2H 9PU (Westminster) First sold beer: by 1722 Ceased brewing: 1905
Reid’s Griffin Brewery 85 Clerkenwell Road EC1R 5AR (Islington) First sold beer: likely by 1690 Ceased brewing: 1899
The closure of the Stag Brewery, beside the river Thames in Mortlake, in 2015, truly marked the end of an era. The Stag was the last working remnant of the giant breweries that turned London into the world capital of brewing in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the last redoubt of the post-war Big Seven brewing groups in the city.
The story likely begins in the 17th century with the original Stag brewery much closer to central London, at the west end of Victoria Street in what was then the rural surrounds of Pimlico, just across from the future site of Victoria station. It was likely founded by the Greene family, who may have been brewers at the domestic brewhouse at Westminster Abbey not far away. William Greene is recorded as brewing at the Stag in 1641, and the brewery’s name is derived from the three stags on the family crest.
The family sold the business to a partnership known as Moore & Elliott in 1793. The Watney family first became involved in 1837 when James Watney bought a share, sponsored by his father-in-law, a hop merchant and brewer. In 1858, the Watney family took 100% ownership, expanding the site and renaming it Watney & Co. By the time the company was registered in 1885, it was the sixth biggest brewery in London, with an annual output of over 570,000 hl.
The Mortlake site may have an even earlier history, with some accounts claiming it originated as a domestic brewery set up to supply Richmond Palace in 1487, or as a monastic brewery attached to Mortlake Manor House when it belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury prior to 1535. But the first evidence of brewing on the site is in 1765, when Mortlake was still a small riverside village.
In that year, James Weatherstone and William Richmond both operated commercial breweries opposite each other on Thames Street. The street no longer exists: it ran as a continuation of Lower Richmond Road from what’s now the bend around a corner of Mortlake Green, northeast through the current brewery site to the riverside at the Town Dock, now Bulls Alley Draw Dock (SW14 8HL).
In 1807 Weatherstone bought out his neighbour with the help of a business partner and subsequently the two sites were run as a single brewery. The business passed through the hands of several subsequent partners until 1852 when it was bought by Charles Phillips and James Wigan. They expanded the site substantially in the 1860s, acquiring large swathes of neighbouring property. Defying local opposition, they successfully lobbied to stop up public rights of way, including Thames Street, and enclosed the resulting campus, now known as the Mortlake Brewery, within a forbidding wall.
Frontage of the Stag Brewery, Mortlake, dating from the 1860s consolidation.
Wigan left in 1877 to take over a brewery in Bishops Stortford, and Phillips continued to run the business with his sons. When he retired in 1889, they sold the brewery to Watney, taking seats on the new owner’s board. The Watney managers were attracted by the Mortlake Brewery’s reputation for good pale ales, and initially primarily used the site for that purpose, with porter and stout production remaining at Pimlico. In 1890, Watney bought and closed Carter Wood & Co’s Artillery Brewery on Victoria Street, Westminster (founded c1823) and in 1895 did the same with Day’s of Saffron Walden.
The company expanded substantially in 1898 to become the biggest brewer in London, Watney Combe Reid & Co, merging with two other major historic porter brewers. Combe & Co began as the Woodyard Brewery, founded by John Shackley sometime prior to 1722 in a former woodyard off Shelton Street in Seven Dials. In 1787, when it was the fifth biggest brewery in London, it was bought by entrepreneur Harvey Combe, with former Whitbread brewer Joseph Delafield as one of the partners. By 1888, when it was registered, its annual output was around 800,000 hl.
The history of Reid’s Griffin Brewery may date back to at least the 1690s, when a brewer is recorded in the aptly-named Liquorpond Street in Clerkenwell, now the stretch of Clerkenwell Road between Grays Inn Road and Hatton Garden. The site was certainly operational by the 1730s. Richard Meux and Mungo Murray bought it in 1763 after their previous site, Jackson’s Brewhouse, not far from the Woodyard in Mercer Street, Seven Dials, which they’d bought in 1757, was badly damaged in a fire. They borrowed the Griffin emblem from the heraldic shield of nearby Grays Inn. Andrew Reid became a partner in 1793 and in 1807 it became Reid & Co when, following a disagreement, Richard Meux’s grandson Henry left to buy the Horseshoe Brewery at St Giles (established by 1764: its successor company was eventually bought by Allied — see Ind Coope).
Originally Combe and Reid planned to merge, but then decided to bring Watney in too. Reid was closed within a year of the merger, in 1899, while Combe continued in operation until 1905.
Many more takeovers and closures followed. Those in Greater London were:
Woodbridge Yorkshire Stingo Brewery, Marylebone, founded c1827, bought and closed 1907.
Chelsea Brewery Co, founded c1850, bought and closed 1820.
Isleworth Brewery, founded by 1726, bought 1924, closed 1952.
Huggins Lion Brewhouse, Soho, founded by 1836, bought and closed 1928.
London & Burton Brewery, Stepney, founded 1862, bought and closed 1929.
Stockwell Brewery (Hammerton’s), founded 1730, bought and closed 1951 (but see also the modern Hammerton).
Watney was a UK pioneer of pasteurised draught beer and pressurised gas dispense, techniques that had been increasingly adopted in the US and elsewhere. According to Martyn Cornell it developed a system dispensing from large cellar tanks pressurised with carbon dioxide in 1913. In 1930, the company installed a German-built bulk pasteuriser at Mortlake and began experimenting with pasteurised beer and pressurised dispense from steel vessels, then known as ‘containers’ rather than kegs. The original intention was to create a draught beer suitable for export, but there was another obvious application in outlets where cask beer wasn’t practical because of limited cellar facilities, opening hours or turnover, like the East Sheen Lawn Tennis Club where the new Watney’s Container Bitter was first served to UK customers in 1935.
The company grew substantially again in 1958 through a merger with another big London brewer, Mann’s, eventually closed in 1979. The original Stag brewery in Pimlico, an area by now known almost universally as Victoria after the station, closed the next year to make way for a major redevelopment including a traffic gyratory system, and Mortlake became the main brewery, inheriting the Stag name.
Watney Mann was a keen participant in the ‘merger mania’ of the period, turning itself into a major national force through acquisitions of substantial regionals like Ushers in Trowbridge, Wilsons in Manchester, Phipps in Northampton, Websters in Halifax and three breweries in Norwich. At the dawn of the 1970s it was firmly established as one of the ‘Big Seven’ national brewers, with eight brewing sites and around 6,000 pubs. It had also begun to expand its interests internationally, acquiring Maes of Waarloos, Belgium, in 1969.
It was during this period that the brewery became identified with arguably the most notorious keg beer of all, Watney’s Red Barrel. Named after a longstanding element of the brewery’s branding, this first appeared as a premium bottled pale ale at around 4.3% in 1950. In 1956, it became the heir to the 1930s experiments with ‘container bitter’, initially as an upmarket brand targeted at non-pub outlets, even including luxury ocean liners. But as sales grew it became more economical to produce and was soon being marketed aggressively in pubs. Reformulated to an inferior specification and rebranded as Red in the early 1970s, it became a byword for a poorly brewed and characterless national brand foisted on an unwilling public.
In 1971, Watney attempted to take over the last surviving large London independent brewery, Truman’s, but found itself fighting a losing battle with the Grand Metropolitan hotels and catering group, which was keen to diversify into brewing and pubs. The Truman deal made Grand Met a serious player and the following year it made a successful bid for Watney Mann too, merging the two companies to create Watney Mann Truman in 1974.
In the early 1970s, the Stag at Mortlake was still producing some cask beer: Special Mild (2.3%), an ordinary bitter known as London IPA or Star Light (3.2%) and Special Bitter (4.4%). Keg Red was by then a desultory 3.5%, though notably more expensive than Special Bitter. There were various bottles, including two barley wines, a pale one known as Export Gold (9%) and a darker one, Yorkshire Stingo (8.7%), inherited from the brewery of the same name which was actually in London as mentioned above. Another iconic product was a version of Star Light in a large can, known as a Party Four, holding four pints (2.3 l), or a Party Seven, holding seven (4 l).
Following the takeover, cask was soon withdrawn at the Stag but, in response to growing consumer demand, by 1977 a revived version of cask Special Bitter known as Fined Stag Bitter (4.5%) was introduced to selected pubs in London, southeast England and the East Midlands, initially produced in Norwich. Cask brewing was revived at Mortlake the next year with the launch of London Bitter (3.8%).
The company closed several of its sites over the succeeding years. It sold its Belgian interests in 1986 and finally closed Truman in 1989. The next year saw the introduction of the Beer Orders, a set of government regulations aimed at restricting the tied house system which had far-reaching consequences for the structure of the brewing industry. Grand Met responded by withdrawing from brewing in 1991, selling its breweries and beer brands to Courage (with the exception of a small handful that were sold to a management buyout: see Manns). Both breweries’ pubs were spun off into an arm’s-length, jointly-owned company, Inntrepreneur.
Courage then leased the Stag at Mortlake to US giant Anheuser-Busch (AB) of St Louis, Missouri, and it was adapted to brew ‘American’ Budweiser in bottle (4.8%) and keg (4.3%) for the UK and wider European market (the ABV of both formats has subsequently been ‘levelled’ to 4.5%). AB bought the site outright in 2002, and it 2008 was bought out itself by Belgian-Brazilian group AmBev to become part of the newly-formed ‘world’s biggest brewer’ Anheuser Busch InBev (AB InBev or ABI: see also Whitbread). ABI was soon planning to close the Stag, though it was reprieved several times due to the high demand for Budweiser, before finally ceasing to brew at the end of 2015.
Where are they now?
Red was withdrawn from the UK market in 1979, and the brand was now regarded as so toxic that the company even removed the red barrel from its corporate branding in 1982. But the poor reputation didn’t extend to international markets, and Red Barrel remained available primarily as a bottled beer in the US until 1994 and in Belgium, France and Spain to around 1998, latterly brewed at facilities other than Mortlake.
Following the Courage deal, the other Watney brands were quietly retired (other than Manns, which had been dealt with separately), with the rights to them eventually passing via Scottish Courage to Heineken (see Courage). The only Watney-branded beer that has remained available throughout is bottled Scotch Ale (8%) for the Belgian market, derived from a 90/- ale from Edinburgh’s Drybrough Brewery, bought in 1965 then sold to Allied and closed in 1967. The beer is now brewed at Alken-Maes in Alken, Belgium, successor to former Watney subsidiary Maes and now also owned by Heineken.
In 2016, a company called Brands Reunited decided that sufficient time had passed for the brand to be revived ironically. It licensed the name from Heineken and commissioned two new beers in keg and can, distant relatives of Watney’s pale ales, from Sambrook’s. In 2021 it even claimed to have revived the Party Seven, actually in the form of a 5 l minikeg, but the beers disappeared from sale soon afterwards.
Following a period of decommissioning, ABI vacated Mortlake during 2016, though retained a presence in London through its purchase of Camden Town in 2015. It also operated the Goose Island Brewpub in Shoreditch between 2018 and 2022. The Budweiser sold in the UK is now likely brewed at Magor and Samlesbury, the lager plants ABI’s predecessor InBev inherited from Whitbread.
The Stag site was sold a Singapore-based developer and is up for regeneration as a new mixed-use neighbourhood of flats, shops and offices, conserving at least some historic buildings. Like many such proposals, it’s been met with local opposition and is still crawling through the planning process: the most recent plans were rejected by Richmond council and a public inquiry is due in 2024.
Grand Metropolitan, meanwhile, returned to brewing in 1997, merging with Guinness to form Diageo. The pub estate has long since passed into other hands, primarily Stonegate and Greene King.
Things to see
The buildings on the Stag Mortlake site still stand as they did when they were vacated in 2016, pending approval of redevelopment plans. Most of them date from a major rebuild in the 1970s, but a few historic structures remain, and currently none of them is listed. The site is closed to the public but some features can be seen from surrounding streets and footpaths.
Starting from the mini-roundabout at the junction of Lower Richmond Road, Sheen Lane and Richmond High Street (26 Lower Richmond Road SW14 7EX), a short walk from Mortlake station, the office block with its elegant curve to the corner is an 1860s legacy, due to be retained. Following the curve northwards along Lower Richmond Road you soon reach what was then the main entrance and is still used as an access point today. The drive here is a stump of Thames Street which originally continued straight ahead, in line with the the westward reach of Lower Richmond Road. Two decorative iron gates, one with the legend ‘Stag Brewery’, flank a gatehouse with a concrete plaque depicting a stag, dating from the 1960s after the brewery was renamed. Behind the gates and slightly left is a late 19th century block with a decorative medallion.
Following the more recent wall west from here along Lower Richmond Road, past a disused entrance in front of a 1970s industrial block with a tall chimney, you reach the corner of Ship Lane. The Jolly Gardeners pub opposite (36 Lower Richmond Road SW14 7EX), on this site since at least 1720 and once known as the Three Tuns, predates the expansion of the brewery and was never connected to it. The current pub was built by Young’s in 1922.
Continuing past the pub on Lower Richmond Road you pass a westwards extension of the brewery, including a new brewhouse, dating from the early 1970s. A section of angled-in wall opposite 5 Lower Richmond Road (SW14 7EZ) displays a war memorial plaque saved from the original Stag at Pimlico. Next to it is a plaque commemorating two brewery employees who died in 1975 trying to rescue a colleague who had collapsed from fumes while inspecting a sewage treatment tank and were similarly overcome. A little further on is what became the main entrance, with 1970s Stag Brewery signing on the gatehouse. The adjacent private sports ground was once Watney’s sports and social club.
Retrace your steps to Ship Lane to continue on a circuit of the site as consolidated in 1863. The lane separates the older and newer sections, with two overbridges connecting them. The structures on both sides are modern, what appear to be liquor tanks right and grain silos left, except for a stretch of older wall on the right.
Reaching the river Thames, one of the remaining historic buildings, also due for conservation, rears up on the right corner: a tall brick 1890s maltings, doubtless located here to take advantage of river transport. It was originally even bigger but partially demolished in the 1970s. Its forbidding profile is due to appear as a workhouse in Disney+ period drama TV series A Thousand Blows, which was partially filmed here in 2023. The Ship pub opposite (10 Thames Bank SW14 7QR) dates from 1781 and is well known for its location on the finishing line of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race: it’s also unconnected to the brewery and was formerly a Taylor Walker pub.
Downstream on the Thames Path is some late 20th century Budweiser branding which also names the brewery, intended to be seen from the river. The wall is at first recent, then largely made up of the former external walls of 19th century buildings, most of which have been demolished. Towards the end of this stretch is the site of the old Town Dock, part of which remains as Bulls Alley Draw Dock, returning you to the High Street.
Left along the High Street you pass more old walls, culminating in the facade of the former bottling plant, topped with the legend ‘Mortlake Brewery 1869’ and two niches with medallions inscribed with the monogram ‘P&W’ (Phillips & Wigan) in florid style. This will be retained in the redevelopment. A few more paces returns you to the curved office building.
Combe’s Woodyard Brewery at Seven Dials, seen from the junction of Earlham, Shelton and Neal Streets, as depicted in Alfred Barnard’s Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, 1890. The building in the centre with drays outside is currently Urban Outfitters.
Remarkably, substantial remnants of both Combe and Reid remain in central London. Standing on the small square at the junction of Earlham, Shelton and Neal Streets in Seven Dials, Covent Garden, facing the entrance to Urban Outfitters (52 Earlham Street WC2H 9LH), all the buildings in front of you were once part of Combe’s Woodyard Brewery, interconnected by overbridges at second floor level, including the Urban Outfitters building itself and the Diesel building to the right. The brewery buildings continue for some distance on both sides of Earlham Street.
To the left, facing onto Shelton Street and Neal Street, is the original core of the site, with an archway on Shelton Street opening onto Old Brewers Yard. Practically the entire block enclosed by Neal Street, Long Acre, Langley Street and Shelton Street once formed part of the brewery, and the survivors include an early 19th century warehouse at 3-7 Neal Street (WC2H 9QL). This and several of the other buildings are Grade II-listed. As explained elsewhere, a new Guinness brewpub, retail and events space is currently under construction in the heart of this site which, when complete, should reveal more brewery heritage.
By the 1880s, the Woodyard extended to the west side of Langley Street, with more connecting overbridges. The big blocks at 20-22 Shelton Street (WC2H 9JJ) and the London Graphic Centre on the corner of Shelton Street and Mercer Street (WC2H 9JL) were part of the site, with Mercers Walk running through it.
The imposing block now known as the Lever Building, on the south side of Clerkenwell Road between Hatton Garden and Leather Lane (85 Clerkenwell Road EC1R 5AR) was once the main building of Reid’s Griffin Brewery. Note the striking octagonal clock on the gable at the Hatton Garden end. The site stretched south to Hatton Wall. A little along Hatton Garden, on another gable high above the cycle docking station, is a medallion depicting a griffin. None of these buildings are listed.
Immediately opposite the southwest corner of Leather Lane and Hatton Wall is a Grade II-listed mid-19th century former Reid pub, originally known as the Clock House but now Craft Beer Co Clerkenwell (82 Leather Lane EC1N 7TR). It’s a one-star heritage pub by virtue of its interior and also stocks an excellent range of contemporary beer.
The Grafton Arms at 2 Strutton Ground (SW1P 2HP) is all that remains of the Carter Wood Artillery Brewery, which was behind the pub and the other buildings facing the street to the south, but was demolished soon after it closed in 1890. The gated alleyway to the right of the pub was once a public road, a continuation of Old Pye Street (then known as Pear Street) giving access to the brewery yard.
Two major redevelopments, between 1959-64 and 2004-18, have obliterated the site of the original Stag brewery near Victoria Station, with some work still ongoing. Sir Simon Milton Square, the east-west walkway through the Nova complex which leaves Buckingham Palace Road by the Stoke House Restaurant (81 Buckingham Palace Road SW1W 0AJ), more-or-less follows the line of the former Brewer Street which originally led to the main brewery entrance. Today it takes you to Bressenden Place, a street built as part of the traffic system in the first redevelopment. The brewery was on the other side of this, stetching east towards Palace Street. Following its demolition, a new Stag pub was opened in 1963 at 15 Bressenden Place, on the west side just to your left, closed and demolished in 2012 to make way for the Nova Building, voted the UK’s ugliest building in 2017.
Two remnants of the first redevelopment remain: Portland House (SW1E 5RS), the 101 m tower immediately opposite on the other side of Bressenden Place, which covered the brewery entrance, and Roebuck House, a residential block behind it to the northwest. These and several other now-demolished blocks were arranged around a central square, Stag Place, an area now covered by the northern part of Cardinal Place Gardens and part of the 21st century block to the north.
On the southwestern corner of Stag Place, the developers commemorated the brewery with a 6.4 m aluminium sculpture of a rearing stag by Edward Bainbridge Copnall. When the site was prepared for redevelopment in 1997, the stag was returned to the artist’s family. They originally donated it to Sevenoaks in Kent but the local council decided they couldn’t provide a site for it, so in 2004 it was installed beside the river Medway in Maidstone at Lockmeadow Entertainment Centre, at the western end of the Millennium Bridge (Barker Road ME16 8SF).
Brewhouse at the Botanist, Richmond TW9, since moved twice and now at Ignition Brewing.
For historical interest, this is a list of commercial breweries which have operated in London in recent years but have since closed, suspended brewing activities for a significant length of time, switched to brewing on other people’s equipment or relocated outside the capital. Below it is a list of breweries which have changed name, often following a change of ownership: this may be helpful in finding information about a particular brewery.
Closed brewery, former brewpub Original site: Queens Head, 66 Acton Street WC1X 9NB (Camden) Second site: 11 Gales Gardens E2 0EJ (Tower Hamlets) Current site: 1 Queens Yard, White Post Lane E9 5EN (Tower Hamlets) oldstreet.beer First sold beer: January 2015 (as Queens Head), March 2018 (as Old Street) Ceased brewing: December 2023
The Old Street story started in 2013 when staff at the Queens Head pub near Kings Cross first attempted brewing under the name Against the Grain. Initial experiments weren’t successful but, following long delays and the installation of a new, very small 1 hl kit, consistency and quality became good enough to sell the beers in the pub, where they were simply branded with the pub name.
In October 2016, two keen staff members from related beer bar Mother Kellys, Adam Green from Arizona and Andreas Wegelius from Finland, took over brewing duties. They renamed the operation Old Street Brewery after the location of the flat where they had begun homebrewing — rather confusingly as the brewery itself has never been based there.
Activities at the pub stopped in May 2017 so the kit, now resourcefully adapted to double its capacity, was relocated to a Bethnal Green railway arch with space for a taproom, opened in April 2018. The brewhouse was replaced a year later by a much bigger 10 hl kit formerly at Pressure Drop.
Further expansion followed in November 2020 when production shifted to a more expansive location, also with a taproom, amid the cluster of breweries in Queens Yard, Hackney Wick, neighbouring Crate, Howling Hops and Truman’s.
The Bethnal Green arch initially continued in use as a bar but the brewery closed this down in November 2021 to concentrate on the Old Street site, which also featured live music.
Components of the beer menu frame a tank at Old Street’s old Bethnal Green site.
Like many others, Old Street struggled to survive following the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns, a challenge exacerbated by rent increases. It last brewed in December 2023 and had closed for good by mid-April 2024.
Nearly all the beer was sold through the taproom, from keg and sometimes cask, with occasional mobile canning runs.
Brewery Original site: 5B Wilmer Business Park, Wilmer Place N16 0LW (Hackney) Second site: 19 Bohemia Place E8 1DU (Hackney) Current site: 6 Lockwood Industrial Park, Mill Mead Road N17 9QP (Haringey) pressuredropbrewing.co.uk First sold beer: 12 January 2013
Former Euston Tap cellarman Graham O’Brien and Sam Smith (no relation to the famous Yorkshire brewing family) are old school friends, and Graham met the third partner in Pressure Drop, Ben Freeman, on an internship at London Fields. They developed their first recipes on a Braumeister pilot brewery in Graham’s garden shed in Stoke Newington in the summer of 2012, but lack of space meant much of the work was done outside – which they quickly realised wasn’t a viable option with winter on its way.
The first commercial brews emerged from a small industrial unit nearby, then in March 2013 they moved to a Hackney railway arch using an 8 hl kit from ABUK. This soon also proved too small, despite the addition of fermenters bought second-hand from Beavertown during one of its various moves.
Over the course of 2017, production was transferred to a new 32 hl Gravity Systems brewhouse, new fermenters and a canning line in a much bigger space with a generous taproom in Tottenham Hale, coincidentally just opposite Beavertown on the same industrial estate. The Hackney arch was restyled as The Experiment bar, operated jointly with Cornwall’s Verdant Brewing. This closed in July 2023 following the expiry of the lease and a failure to renew at an affordable rent.
Pressure Drop’s current Tottenham brewhouse.
Pressure Drop brews a variety of
contemporary beers in keg and can.
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