MUCH has been mentioned over the years about May’s Brewery in Brook Street, which existed between 1756 and 1966, but Basingstoke had three other breweries in the town.
The nearest to the old town centre was on the corner of Winchester Street and the original Victoria Street – a narrow road which is now called Allen’s Lane – and behind the Victoria Hotel.
The hotel, once known as The Shades, is recorded as early as 1838 under the ownership of Edward Adams.
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When he died, his widow and her three sons kept the business going until 1896, when Mrs Adams died. The Victoria Brewery was then sold and bought by Crowley’s of Alton.
In the latter years of the Adams’ ownership, the brewery and hotel were the scene of groups of Salvation Army members crying “ban all drink”, as they associated alcohol with bad behaviour and fighting. Other breweries and inns suffered the same in the 1880s.
The Victoria Hotel continued in business until 1970, when it was closed down and converted into a discotheque. A few years later it was made into offices, the rear being demolished for other offices and car parking.
Another brewery at the rear of an inn was the Pear Tree Brewery at the top of Flaxfield Road. The Pear Tree Inn stood on the site of an older building called The Green Dragon, an ancient tavern, which fell into decay.
The title of Pear Tree came from being built on land where a pear tree was growing. In 1868, the Barrett family purchased the inn, where, according to old records, the Flaxfield Brewery was in operation by 1871.
Seven years later, the brewery business was moved to the Grapes Hotel in Wote Street. The inn was altered inside and out over the years. Then, in 1972, it was demolished, along with the Marie Josie Café, under the Town Development Scheme.
The third brewery was at the rear of the Grapes Hotel in Wote Street, run by Charles and George Penton in 1838.
By 1871 Frederick Blunden was the proprietor. He also owned wine and spirits vaults in London Street and advertised a range of alcoholic drinks.
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In 1878 the brewery was bought by two businessmen from Farnham, and later the brewery premises became a store.
In the 1950s, part of the building was used as a depot and “stop press” printing office for the London Evening Standard newspaper.
The Grapes Hotel and other buildings in that area were demolished to make way for the new shopping centre in 1967.
The art of brewing alcohol goes back to ancient Egypt, and their methods were copied by the Romans, Greeks, and Anglo-Saxons. The Romans were intrigued by the process of preparing liquor from corn by means of fermentation.
England did not partake of this form of drink until the year 1400 when it was imported to Winchelsea in Sussex from Holland. This brought about the very first brewery of an amateur nature in 1436, using the same system as the Dutch.
The English then realised, after experimenting, that almost any fruit juice, or any mash made by boiling grain, roots, flowers or other vegetable matter in water, will ferment when yeast is added to it. Even without yeast, many fruit juices will ferment of their own accord.
Within 50 years, the method of making alcoholic liquor as it is known today had been established, and the vast brewery businesses that are scattered around the world today keep millions of people from going dry.
But alcohol is not only used for drinking, it is a useful liquid in industry. An assortment of products are made from the liquor, such as paints, inks, cosmetics and varnishes.
This fact was hardly known in the 1920s when America tried to ban the selling and drinking of alcohol in the country.
In 1919, the Volstead Prohibition Act was introduced, after religious groups asked the country’s leaders to stop people from getting drunk on the streets. However, this led to groups of people, known as “bootleggers”, making illicit liquor which was supplied in various ways.
The act was finally repealed in 1933 when it was revealed that too many people in “high places” were drinking alcohol, and the idea was scrapped.
This article was written by Robert Brown and originally published in the Gazette on Friday, August 20, 2004
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